


Volume 2: Wolves vs. Hearts - II

by Anna (arctic_grey)



Series: The Heart Rate of a Mouse [4]
Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2018-10-24 01:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 67,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10730940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arctic_grey/pseuds/Anna
Summary: Trigger warnings for entire series:substance abuse (alcohol, pain killers, drugs), childhood abuse, graphic depictions of sex, dubious consent, mentions of underage sex, mention of date rape, mild violence, minor character death.





	1. Nocturnal As We Are

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger warnings for entire series:** substance abuse (alcohol, pain killers, drugs), childhood abuse, graphic depictions of sex, dubious consent, mentions of underage sex, mention of date rape, mild violence, minor character death.

The round table is covered in glasses, and I have to move my chair to give more room to the people joining our overcrowded party. Their voices all blur together, barely audible over the music in the club, but I laugh anyway, talking to the people closest to me. Gabe’s been shocking everyone with vivid details of a Uruguayan prostitute he spent a night with on his trip down south – “Just for a laugh,” he says. “I don’t need to pay for sex. I mean, come on! Diane, tell me I’m not fucking sexy!”

I turn my head away, leaving him to his pursuits of sleeping with more female celebrities. I lean over Keltie to talk to Alice, who’s drunk as fuck but what more can I expect from the man? Margaux keeps trying to get my attention, her bony hand getting lost on my thigh every few minutes. Keltie can’t see it, but she looks like she suspects something, and I try to discreetly push the model’s hand away as I smile at her benignly. Crowds have gathered close by to stare at us like we’re on display, to try and get past the bouncers of the VIP section, occasionally yelling our names and waving hopefully. Keltie looks like she feels out of place but is intrigued by the situation, Gabe is loving it, and I think it’s kind of funny, really. All the attention. How important it is for famous people to underline their fame, come to these clubs and roll around in special treatment.

Alice is touching a lock of Keltie’s hair. “How do you keep it so soft?” he wonders, his black, ragged chunks of hair falling to his shoulders.

“You know, raw egg does wonders for your hair,” Margaux informs us, but then she gets distracted, looking ahead of herself. “Well, isn’t he fine.” She smiles to herself devilishly, and I follow her gaze to the entrance of the VIP area. Two guys are talking to one of the bouncers. The bouncer looks our way, and I give him a nod as the unofficial head of our round table. And Margaux is right: he is fine. Finer. The finest. And it’s funnier how these models, actresses and singers lose their shine when their artificiality is replaced with something that actually matters. Someone that actually matters.

“Shane!” Gabe laughs out loud to the new arrivals as I decline Margaux’s offer and pass the small silver tray of coke lines along to an eager looking Alice. “Bren!”

The music soars in my ears, and I focus on smoking a cigarette and talking to Alice about Buddhism out of all things, but that’s fine, it’s all good, we’re all famous enough to be philosophers. Gabe’s motioning back and forth and talking to Shane and Brendon, who are just visible in my peripheral vision. My skin feels electric, and maybe the music isn’t soaring in my ears. Maybe it’s just blood.

“Ryan!” Shane calls out over the music, and I jerk and look his way, full of surprise.

“Shane! Hey, man!” I blow out cigarette smoke. Shane looks at the people by the table like he’s this close to shitting his pants. I count to three, and then – “Oh. Hey, Brendon.”

Brendon nods. “Hey, Ryan. Keltie.” He does a cordial hand lift. He’s wearing a tight, black t-shirt that leaves a slice of his lower stomach exposed, his blue hip huggers coming so low on his waist that his hipbones are visible. I breathe in deep, my hands dropping to my knees and squeezing tightly. There’s nothing dignified in the way that my pants suddenly feel tighter, but I don’t need it to be dignified.

He’s put effort into it. Tonight. His clothes. His hair. I bet he smells divine.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” I tell him, and he looks searching, cocking his enticing hips as his brows furrow.

“Yeah, man! Must’ve been like –”

“Before Christmas.”

“– before Christmas! Yeah. Exactly. You been good?”

I shrug. “Been good.”

“Far out,” he smiles, and we hold eye contact for a second during which his casual smile fades. He points over his shoulder. “Well, I’m gonna go tackle the trenches around the bar and try to get us some drinks.” He turns to his boyfriend. “Shane, the usual?”

Shane seems to snap out of a daze and is quick to nod. “Oh. Yeah. Thanks.”

Brendon nods, smiles, our eyes meet again. He averts his gaze. He leaves the VIP section and vanishes back to the dance floor, snaking between people, and his body looks amazing when he moves. When he does anything at all. I seem to be the only one who’s aware of it.

Gabe’s returned to his Uruguayan whore story, and Keltie shakes her head like she doesn’t know what to make of it while I say, “Shane, sit down! Alice, this is the guy directing my documentary! Shane Valdes, Alice Cooper. You guys talk. About. The importance of makeup in the visual arts.” I get up and adjust my jacket a little. “Excuse me for a minute. Need to go to the little boys’ room.”

I cause a commotion by exiting the fenced off area, people grabbing my arms and calling my name. One of the venue security men tells the clubbers to make way for me and then proceeds to follow me across the dance floor to make sure I am not disturbed. If clubs want guests like us, they need to make sure we get what we need.

“Thanks, man,” I say when I get to the door leading to the toilets, shaking hands with the bouncer and passing him a ten, and he nods, all serious like, and then stays firmly where he is to guard the door as I slip in.

I take in the surroundings: one guy at the urinals, another just passing me on his way back out, and one – the one – by the sinks, pretending to be drying his hands though they don’t look wet. I go to the sinks and put my hands under the tap of running water. I watch the reflection of the room as the urinal guy zips himself up and heads to the door without washing his hands. I watch him leave. We watch him leave.

I pull my hands back, shake water off of them. Meet his eyes in the mirror as he puts his hands into his jean pockets and smiles wickedly. “So,” he says. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

He grins deviously, and my guts flare up even as I grin cockily.

Push the door open, step inside, close the door, lock it.

The stall wall bangs loudly when I push Brendon against it, our mouths locked and hungry. His hands are in my hair, his entire body asking me, telling me, practically offering itself. He groans against my mouth, and that should not be allowed, his taste, his too tight clothes and the way he smells and him, him, _him_. “You should not wear these jeans,” I tell him breathlessly between kisses, my hands grabbing his ass through the denim. “Makes me want to fuck you so hard.”

He groans against my mouth. “Why d’you think I put them on in the first place?”

Tease.

“You’ve been thinking about me all fucking day, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” His voice is gorgeously breathless. I love him wanting me, want him wanting me. He pulls me in for a dirty kiss, but not too hard. We both know where we are, who’s out there, how much time we probably have: five minutes with this crowd. Go back and tell the others that getting a drink was impossible, that I got cornered by some overeager fan. Lie a little. Cover up our tracks. We’ve become good at that.

Practice makes perfect.

He cups the front of my pants roughly, rubbing just right and having me rocking into his hand. I have nothing on him: I’ve been thinking about him all day, all goddamn day again. I break the kiss and bite on his lower lip hungrily. “Don’t make me go back out there with a hard-on,” I whisper, my breathing laboured, knowing that it’s probably too late already and my cock will harden fully regardless of what he does next.

“What if I took care of it?” he returns sultrily.

Maybe he could with that mouth of his, or with his hand or, fuck, fuck, better yet, I could fuck him against the wall, give us both what we need. But then we’d stumble out looking so fucked, and she’s here and he’s here. And we can’t have that. No, that’d be no fun at all.

I reluctantly pull his hand off of my crotch. He lets out a sound of protest. I pant against his cheek, breathing him in. Savouring his scent. Mind racing. Trying to make this work. “It’s been four days, Bren. Four fucking days.”

“I know. Fuck, I know,” he groans, sounding so gorgeous, music to my ears. He takes in a deep breath. “We could. Now. If you want to?”

“Yeah. God, yeah. Always want to.”

His breath gets cut short, and he squeezes my hip tightly. “Me too.”

It sounds like a confession if there ever was one.

Our lips meet, the kiss lingering. Cigarettes have mixed with the taste that’s just him, and it’s intoxicating. “You know what to do?” I ask breathlessly.

“Of course.”

“Good.” We smile against each other’s mouths, and a joy deep within me awakens, something I can’t explain or label. “Get to it,” I say, pulling away from him and nodding towards the door. He wipes his mouth and stops to listen for a second, makes sure no one’s right outside. Before he steps out, he catches me by surprise and lands a kiss on my lips. It’s a clumsy fit, my lips squashed against his. It’s the most perfect kiss I’ve ever gotten.

Once he’s gone, I try to catch my breath. I straighten my clothes, flatten my hair and count to twenty-five twice before following suit. The toilets are now Brendonless. I check my reflection in the mirror, habitually checking for lipstick stains that Keltie might notice, but screwing men is so much easier than trying to conduct an affair with a woman. I look slightly dazed, but fuck it. I’m dazed. Sold. Done for.

The bouncer is still waiting for me outside. He now escorts me back across the dance floor. Brendon’s at the bar, and he keeps up a neutral expression as he waits to get served.

Gabe is canoodling with Diane, who’s probably just amusing him. She’s explaining about her new movie that’s coming out in a few months, followed by Gabe saying that it will be a flop because no one’s going to think someone as beautiful as her would actually date Woody Allen. Keltie’s expression brightens up when she sees me, but I don’t reclaim my seat. “Listen, babe,” I call out to her over the noise. “I just bumped into an old friend from LA, Scotty. I’ve mentioned Scotty, right?” I then point at my ear. “It’s so noisy in here, so we’re heading out to catch up!” I back this up by now motioning towards the exit.

She looks perplexed. “Scotty? I don’t recall you –”

“Yeah, Scotty. You know Scotty!”

She frowns. “I don’t really – But. Yeah. Yeah, sure thing.” She smiles and reaches for her purse, and no, no, not what I meant.

“Aw, Kelts, it’s gonna be a guys only thing.” I shrug apologetically, and her smile fades. I know that she doesn’t want me to leave her alone here when she doesn’t know anyone apart from Gabe, and Gabe is extremely preoccupied with Miss Keaton while Alice is still trying to put moves on Keltie.

“We’ll just have to have fun without you!” Margaux laughs from beside my girl, high on coke, and she grabs Keltie’s hand enthusiastically.

“I’m sure you will.”

Keltie looks affronted. I’d be affected by it if it weren’t for what I’m trading her company with.

“Call me tomorrow,” I tell her and quickly wave a goodbye, and it’s only then that Shane notices me leaving, and his face falls and he looks bummed out that I continue not to socialise with him outside work. I wink at him, tongue in cheek, and he laughs like I’m one crazy fucker.

Brendon enters the VIP area just as I exit it. I don’t as much as look at him.

Fifteen minutes and two cigarettes later, Brendon walks out of the club. I’m on the other side of the street, not enjoying the cold, but then it stops to matter. He spots me and crosses the street, and there’s something to the way he walks that’s mesmerising. “Hey,” he says, eyes sparkling. “So where are you right now?”

“Catching up with an imaginary friend. You?”

He lifts a hand to his temple. “Killer headache. Nearly head-splitting.”

“Huh.” I step closer to him like he is the centre of gravity. “These sudden migraines of yours are worrying.”

“That’s what Shane said,” he says with a serious expression though his eyes are still twinkling, competing with stars, and I offer him the rest of what I’m smoking. His cheeks hollow as he takes in a deep drag, and he instantly coughs, blinking and passing the stub back to me. I simply flick it to the ground. He eventually blows the smoke out. “Well, that wasn’t a cigarette.”

“Nope.”

“You’re bad company, Ross.”

“Is there any other kind?” I ask, signalling over the taxi that’s coming down the street. He’s smiling a secretive smile to himself, and I’m pretty sure I’m the secret. “Now come on. It’s taking a lot of willpower not to kiss you out here.”

“Trust me,” he says, eyes lingering on my lips, “I know.”

And there it is again. That stupid little somersault in my stomach that only he manages to cause. The rush of something that leaves me weak in the knees.

He gets in the taxi first. I look up and down the street, make sure no one of importance sees us slipping into the night together, and then get in myself.

In the backseat, his hand restlessly travels up my thigh, our fingers lacing and our joined hands moving from me to him, landing on his crotch, rubbing his gorgeous dick through his jeans. Both of us look out of the windows like we’re bored to tears when in reality he’s getting hard already, our breaths shallow, and I’m so hard for him. We’re so fucking desperate that we’re trying to touch each other in the taxi.

Shane’s got no idea just how much of a crazy fucker I am.

* * *

The studio’s recently been built in the Lower East Side, a few singles and albums on its belt. It’s been booked indefinitely for the recording of the first Ryan Ross & The Whiskeys album, though Jon showed me a recording schedule he drafted. I think he’s worried that if he doesn’t hold the reins, then no one will.

He seems to forget the miraculous existence of Vicky. She told the band to come in for noon but for me – the main musician – to come in later. It’s closer to five when Keltie and I get to the studio. We enter a small but official lobby with a reception desk and a secure looking door on the left. Vicky is talking to the receptionist, and she is looking good in a tight leather skirt and a frilly white shirt. She spots us instantly.

“Right on time!” she says, though she told me to come in around two. She sounds enthusiastic, and her eyes sparkle like this is as much her album as it is mine. The blonde receptionist looks startled and sorry for existing – Vicky’s clearly already enforcing the “Disturb Mr. Ross only when absolutely necessary” rule. “Keltie,” Vicky then says, her tone having just the perfect amount of surprise in it without being downright rude.

“Keltie wanted to check out the studio,” I explain before my manager thinks that I’ll be bringing my girlfriend to the studio regularly. I have no such plans.

“Ah, I see.”

“I wanted to see what my boyfriend’s up to,” Keltie says, squeezing my hand tighter. What I’m up to, what I’m up to. She gets to see carefully selected sections of my life.

I say, “So. Can we see the place?”

Vicky’s way ahead of me, taking us to the heavy metal door that leads us to a wide corridor. She says that only a few have got a key to the studio and hands me mine. “Gabe doesn’t have one,” she says. “He’d lose his own grandmother if given the chance.” She flicks brown hair to the side and adds, “So far, your fans don’t know you’re here. They will soon. Don’t worry, we’ll keep security out front to keep the crazy ones out.”

“Aren’t they all crazy?” I counter. She laughs but doesn’t reply.

The studio is at the end of the corridor, consisting of a number of rooms: a live room with separate vocal and percussion booths at the back, a spacious control room with a few couches opposite the mixing console, a cosy looking lounge and a storage room. The contents of our practice space are divided between the storage room and the lounge, which has hard cases behind the two orange couches: guitars, amps, basses and Jon’s tenor ukulele have taken up most of the space. The lounge has a table and five chairs next to a small fridge from the 60s. The room looks like an escape from the stress of the studio whenever we need it. There are no windows anywhere. Good. We’ll be recording during nights mostly, nocturnal as we are.

Most hard cases have been marked with my initials, a few with ‘Canadian History’ and a few with ‘The Followers’, and there’s even one with ‘S.J.S.’, but I push Spencer and his absence out of my mind and whatever spoils I might have gained from our divorce. Instead I focus on the few boxes in the far corner with an unfamiliar combination of ‘S.V.’

Vicky is quick to clear up the confusion. “All of those are Shane’s. He’s been given days on which he can come and shoot you guys in the studio.”

“Is he here now?” I ask.

“He’s somewhere here.” She leads us to the control room where Bob and Roy are, both getting up to shake hands with me. I got to pick whichever producer I wanted, and Bob temporarily has moved to New York for me. I wanted him though we’ve never worked together, but Bob Johnston has experience with a different type of music. I’ve come from a progressive rock band. Bob’s got a handful of Leonard Cohen albums on his CV. This should be beyond interesting. Roy, on the other hand, mixed _Her House_ back in ’72 and is one of the rare men I’ve felt in tune with about music, Spencer and Jon aside. Bob’s got an assistant or another with him, but the kid doesn’t even try to talk to me. The Rule once again enforced. I wave to my band in the recording room through the glass. The Whiskeys all grin excitedly, microphones set out by the different instruments.

“That’s a lot of buttons,” Keltie laughs, eyeing the mixing console.

“Yes, well, music is more than just something to dance to,” Vicky says to Keltie. “Speaking of which.” She turns to me, lifting her neatly plucked eyebrows too high. “Heard you met Scotty the other night. How is he these days?”

“Scotty’s great. Still a lunatic.”

“No change there then,” she says, not as naturally as I’d like. She brushes hair behind her ear, maybe wondering if her acting skills are up to the job. They’re so-so. “Well,” she says. “Should you start recording your comeback album?”

“Yeah.”

I pull out an old notebook, a compilation of notes and observations originally scribbled down on napkins and receipts. It’s all there, what I want to say on this album. Joe always wanted rock ‘n roll, good times, something groovy, something heavy. He didn’t care about the words I sang. Jon does. It’s not what’d Jon say or think or tell the world, but our partnership is unequal, and he once said that he supposes that even the dark things of the world need to be addressed.

The notebook also has a list of twenty-five songs that I want to record, and I look over it to remind myself of what I’m meant to do. We need to start somewhere, and this is the first album I’ve ever done where I don’t need to compromise or accommodate other people’s wishes. The music has lived in my head for months now. All that needs to happen is for the music to come out right.

Keltie starts getting ready to leave for her show after a quick browse about the place, and I kiss her goodbye with thought put into it, a see you later and miss you already. She looks about the studio excitedly. “I know this will be your masterpiece. I can sense it already.” She smoothes down my hair, smiling lovingly, and a small sense of pride sparks up in my guts. She just might be right.

As Keltie leaves, Vicky calls out, “Good luck with the show!” She waves with a fake smile, and Keltie looks appalled and vanishes with quick, echoing steps. Thankfully the recording team have joined my band in the live room and aren’t present to see my girls bickering.

“Vicky, I’ve told you to play nice.”

“I was –”

“No. You acted like a bitch again.”

Vicky smirks. “Well, I tend to be a bitch.” I stare her down, and she rolls her eyes. “Maybe I’d be nice if she did more than glare at me.” Vicky’s undeniably got a point there. “Anyway,” she says, professional once more, “the studio’s ready, your imaginary friend Scotty exists, and you’re full of songs. Looks like we’re all set!”

“About that –”

“I don’t need to know.” She dismissively holds out her palms. “My job is to look out for you. Trust me, I lie for you on a daily basis, anyway.” She clears her throat. “Now, that being said, it’s a first you’ve asked me to do something like that and if you feel like your manager should know what’s going on...”

“It’s not.”

“Then that’s all I need to know.” She smiles, but not well enough to fool me. She wants to know.

I go to the live room to meet the band. A team spirit is instantly palpable, Jon squeezing my shoulder, grinning, while Patrick is starry-eyed. “This studio is incredible!” the former bookstore employee enthuses. “All cutting edge!”

“Ain’t it good to be us,” Gabe grins.

It takes us forever to settle down, Vicky repeatedly telling Gabe to pack it in and focus. I choose a song at random – _Piccadilly Women_ – as the place to start out of all the songs and all the separate tracks: vocals, drums, guitars, handclaps, bass lines, ukulele intros and then some and then some.

We are trying to find a common tune with Bob’s skills and our vision when the door bursts open, and Shane stumbles in, carrying an enormous box.

“Hey. Sorry,” he heaves, putting the box down clumsily. “Extra cameras and lights,” he explains, catching his breath. He looks excited and tired, and as far as I can tell, absolutely clueless. I don’t really think I’ve got one on him, though I do: I’m fucking his boyfriend. I’ve never thought much of Shane and still don’t. If anything, I think less of him. How can he not notice? Granted, Brendon’s an amazing liar and actor, almost to the point of disturbing. But he’s done it all his life. Pretended to be people he hasn’t been: a good Mormon son, an obedient waiter. But if I were Shane, if _I_ were him, I’d sense it. I’d smell another man’s scent on Brendon’s soft skin, sense the presence of someone else in his smile. Shane probably thinks it’s all him.

Yeah, Shane and what army?

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” I tell him as if to a compatriot. He forms no kind of competition anymore, but I want to keep him out of the way. Content.

“Yeah, I do. The van’s almost empty now, though.”

Gabe, who has been looking at Shane’s tired face with some concern, says, “Pobrecito. You need assistants or light people or something, man. I mean, you can’t do an entire documentary on your own.”

“He’s not alone,” Vicky objects from where she is leaning against the window between the studio and the control room. “We’ll be hiring him a crew now that the proper filming is about to start.”

A proper film crew. Shane won’t be any less busy because of one; he’ll be even more occupied delegating the work load and processing the material coming in. Shane looks slightly chuffed when the talk turns to a proper crew, and why wouldn’t he be? Married to his job as he is. Oh, he’s professional. He’s so fucking professional.

Brendon lied to Shane about the waiting job, about getting fired back in December. Brendon told me that when we were reunited. Confided in me. He told Shane that he left the restaurant, and when he told Shane about it, he had already gotten a job bartending in that semi-sleazy club in Chinatown, a thankfully manageable trip from my place. I don’t think Brendon chose the club because of me. He just really wanted to get a job before his boyfriend found out that he was unemployed, but I like to think that maybe he focused his job searching to Lower Manhattan for a reason.

Brendon can’t be his real self around Shane. It’s not Brendon’s fault, but Shane’s. Brendon gets to be himself around me, though.

We start getting ready to do a practice run of _Piccadilly Women_ , and Shane prepares to film The Official Start of The Recording of the Currently Unnamed Album. Gabe came up with the easy to remember title and seems pleased with it.

Shane sets up his gear next to me, clearly intent on having as much footage of me as he can. I stand where I am, a guitar hanging around my lean form. Shane’s bulkier than me. More muscular. I remain my twig self, but I’m taller than him. It’s pretty obvious which physique Brendon prefers.

“So,” I say, tuning my guitar two steps down, watching Shane manhandling a heavy looking video camera. “What days are you coming to film us?”

“Depends on how long it takes for you to record the album, but Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday this week and the next.”

“Far out.”

My mind races. Brendon works during the weekends, but he’s definitely free on Tuesdays. That’ll work. Next Tuesday, I need to sleep in, forget to show up because I was caught up pondering the mystery of life or some other pseudo-artistic reason and have Brendon come over, fuck him for hours while Shane videos Patrick trying to hit the high hat just right.

“Although I need to be out of here early next Thursday,” Shane then says, “so that might be only half a night of shooting.”

“You going someplace?”

The Bermuda Triangle, maybe?

“Nah, it’s just –” He pauses and smiles sheepishly. “It’s our second anniversary with Brendon. He’s finishing early at the club so we’ll still get to celebrate a little.”

“Huh. That’s nice.” I tune the B-turned-G string. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” He sounds proud, like it’s an accomplishment. And it is. Someone like him having managed to hold onto Brendon for two whole years. It’s certainly an accomplishment. I only managed it for a few months myself. This time, though, it’s different. Being with Brendon always felt good, but I don’t remember it having felt this light. Knowing we won’t get caught this time. The secret rendezvous are still there but now without my second-guessing. I know what I want.

And Shane might think he’s got Brendon, but he doesn’t. I do.

Shane’s enthusiasm for their anniversary would be ironic if it weren’t a little sad. Celebrating something that exists only in his head.

“But, you know, it’s not a big a deal,” Shane muses. “It’s not like a single day measures up your relationship.”

“Oh yeah,” I nod. “You’re right about that.”

But all the time Brendon spends in my bed does.

* * *

He laughs, his muscles vibrating under his slicked up skin. I press my nails into his lower stomach, hoping to signal him to stop, but he doesn’t. I hum in protest, the sound muffled. He says a breathless, “Sorry, fuck, sorry.” His hands are tangled in my hair, and I try to breathe through my nose, focus on sucking and not biting, and I slowly, slowly try to get some magic happening right about now, but my tongue feels like a stiff log and the saliva’s just making everything messier. I must not gag, don’t gag, don’t gag _again,_ and he laughs, a spurt of, “Sorry, oh god, I don’t mean to –”

I pull back with a wet pop and a silent thank you from my pained jaw. I sit on my knees between his parted legs and glare. “Okay, which bit of this blowjob attempt is funny to you?” I ask demandingly. He keeps laughing, almost gasping for breath. “Fuck you, Brendon. Oh my god, fuck _you_.”

I attempt to leave, but he grabs my wrist. “Aw, come on!” He tugs me closer, but I refuse to move or to look at him, focusing my gaze to the window and the evening sunlight coming in through the venetian blinds of my bedroom. I really don’t need to be here, getting laughed at. I could be banging a hundred groupies right about now. “You get an A for effort,” he says seductively, now crawling into my lap. He’s naked and gorgeous and radiating warmth, once fucked already, and I should’ve just stuck to that, do what I’m good at and not try to explore completely unfamiliar territory.

I get my cock sucked. Not the other way around.

Except for how I want to do it to him and how I need therapy so badly because this isn’t making me want to gag.

Oh. Actually, it is.

“I can’t believe it,” I sigh, wrapping my arms around his waist and holding him close. I press my forehead against his shoulder. “You know how much I’ve had my cock sucked? A lot. A hell of a lot.”

“Uh huh,” he says, nibbling my earlobe, his erection brushing against my stomach, leaving behind a wet trail of my own saliva and hopefully his pre-come, but probably not. He’s most likely sporting a sympathy boner rather than a ‘Ryan, your mouth feels so good on me’ boner. I trace the insides of my mouth with my tongue, a foreign taste all over. He tastes good. His cock tastes good, and I want to get back down there and deepthroat him until he’s crying for mercy, or maybe I should just lick his balls a little, see where that gets us. If he only stopped _laughing_.

“I’ve had my cock sucked hundreds of times by dozens and dozens of people. And they all just fucking went for it, and some gagged, sure, and it only made me fuck their mouths because I wanted to be a dick about it, but I thought that cock-sucking just came to people _naturally_. I thought that it was like, like breathing, something you just _do._ ”

“Uh huh.” He’s leaving wet kisses on my neck, and I bury my nose in his hair, breathe him in, feeling the sorrow now wash over me.

“I can’t believe I’m not good at this.” I feel him laughing silently, the movement vibrating against me, and I growl and push him off of me. He lands back against the mattress with a soft thud but grins up at me devilishly. “See how funny it is when I bite your dick,” I snarl.

“Groupies have given you an unrealistic view of sex,” he says matter-of-factly, stretching out on the bed, legs spreading and for a split second I see his stretched hole, and my guts tighten with want. “And besides, you’re very good at the other stuff.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me, and I flip him off before eyeing his beautifully erected cock with some longing.

“You know, maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you and your fucking oversized bratwurst. You thought of that?”

“Your cock is bigger than mine, so... no.” He sounds fucking self-satisfied right about now. “It’s pretty hot you haven’t sucked cock before. I mean, I can tell you’ve now got a lot more experience in fucking men.”

“Oh, you can?” I ask sceptically, though yeah. He probably can. I’ve picked up tricks. Can locate his prostate in record time. Have more positions up my sleeves. “Fucking is one thing, this another. I mean, I’m not going to suck just anyone’s cock,” I object. Degrade myself for just anyone. It doesn’t feel degrading when I do it to him, though. It’s him.

“You shouldn’t either. I mean, with your incredible cocksucking skills, you might spoil a poor man for life –”

“Fuck. Off.”

He laughs again, his gaze dropping from my face. “Maybe I should... give you a demonstration. In which I blow that _amazing_ cock of yours and you groan my name as you shoot come down my throat.” His voice has dropped significantly, and then he looks over to the alarm clock on my nightstand. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before I need to leave for work, and I’d hate to leave you with that boner.”

“And what about yours?” I ask, crawling over his body. Our cocks brush together as I lean in, and his breathing hitches deliciously.

His parted lips brush against mine. “I’ll touch myself as I blow you.”

“Christ,” I breathe out, my mind full of images of him jerking off, his mouth full of my cock and him loving it and getting driven insane by it. I kiss him hungrily, craving him even though I’ve just had him, but he’s addictive. He’s the only addiction I’ve ever had that I don’t think stems from a deep-seeded desire to self-destruct.

“You taste like me,” he groans against my lips that still feel numb from my attempts to suck him off. “Fuck, that’s so hot.” He kisses me twice as hard like he’s trying to trace the taste, and just as I’m fucking melting into it, he flips us over. Our knees knock together, but we fall into place. We always do, like puzzle pieces, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, legs entwined. He breaks the kiss with a knowing grin. “You know what makes a good blowjob?” He leaves a wet kiss on my jaw and begins to travel down my body, his lips moving on me like he wants to devour me.

“Having no gag reflex?” I suggest as he sucks on a nipple. I muffle a groan.

“Practice,” he corrects, his hand having slipped down to size up my cock.

“I really doubt that,” I say, trying to breathe though my head is spinning – he is _touching_ my cock, his hardened fingertips caressing the flushed skin. His tongue dips into my belly button, and that should not turn me on the way it does. I writhe beneath him a little. Just a little. I try to expatiate upon my point. “Some of the girls who’ve sucked me off have been blowjob virgins, and they’ve still managed to get most of my cock in.”

“You got more like a third,” he grins against my hipbones, butterfly kisses teasing the hell out of me.

“I definitely got half of your dick. At _least_.”

He looks up, pupils blown and lips shiny. “Guess you’re not as greedy as me.” He takes a hold of the base of my cock and swallows me down in one fucking swift and sinful movement. I groan loudly, hips bucking as I grab his hair. Oh _god_. His lips stretch around my length, every inch of me disappearing into his hot, velvety mouth like it’s nothing, like that’s all it takes. I curse and ball up the sheets with my fists. He sucks on my cock, moaning the way he always does when he blows me, greedy little cocksucker. I have no leverage because he has me gasping into the room, pleasure flashing up my spine. So wet, so hot, so good, his tongue, his lips, god, he’s fucking amazing at this, and the things he does with his mouth, what he does to me –

He pulls back, his magical mouth vanishing. I reach for him clumsily, trying to push him down from his shoulder. I rasp, “No, no, demonstration not over yet, come on –”

“The real secret,” he says, tongue twirling around the head of my cock, and my entire body twitches, “is wanting to please.” He pulls back, looking thoughtful. “Which I figure even the most virginal Followers fan wanted to do when they got down on their knees for you.” He leans back in and hungrily kisses the tip of my cock with swollen lips, his tongue licking my slit where I’m leaking. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. “You taste like candy,” he groans, sounding fucking turned on as pre-come decorates his bottom lip. I laugh in turn because I probably don’t. He tasted bitter, acidy, and it made me even harder. I loved his taste. It was one of the – one of the many things. Between back then and now... The tour and the breakup and then nothing, nothing at all, and I had time to think about him during that time, and I was hungover and suffering coke withdrawal on the train to Manchester when it occurred to me that I had never sucked him off, my mouth had never been on his cock and probably now never would be, and it was a shame, I thought. Because now I wondered about his taste and scent, being on my knees, mouth so full of cock that my nose would press to his pubic hair, my saliva sliding over his balls, dirty and gritty and real, nothing being more or less than what it was. Sucking his cock. Another man’s cock. Brendon’s cock. Having him pull on my hair and fuck my mouth, and I never got to do that or try it out and now never would because he was gone, gone, gone, and I put that on the long fucking list of the things I never got to do with him.

Two years later, out of an English train and into my New York apartment, having him come over before work so that we can fuck, and I finally get to try it. Ticking off this particular one, though... didn’t really go as planned. It’s nice to know that I amuse him in bed. That’s nice. Really.

“I want to please you,” I object hazily because he’s back to blowing me, his head bobbing up and down as he tortures my cock with that god-given mouth of his. I watch my flushed cock disappear and reappear from between his thick, red lips. He hollows his cheeks, and my eyelids flutter shut as I push into his mouth. Fucking hell. “God, Bren, just like that. Fuck, don’t stop, you’re so good at this, you’re so – No, _no_ , which bit of not stopping is unclear to you?” I groan in frustration, and he smiles against my shaft, tongue licking lazily.

“I think you want to please the part of your brain that thinks you’re a natural sex god.”

“Well, I am. I’ve got two divine powers: ingenious musical talent and god-like sex skills.” He scoffs. Scoffs! “Do I need to remind you of last week? I got you off three times, Brendon. _Three_ rounds of making you come and getting you hard again before I finally let go myself, and I can go on and on without coming for fucking hours, I can – Oh, oh, Bren, fuck, fuck _fuck_.” His mouth is back on me, swallowing me down, and he cups my balls, pulling on them just fucking right. He groans around me, and I know he’s jerking himself off with his other hand, and I – “Fuck, I’m gonna come, Brendon, _fuck_.” I grab his hair with both hands, fucking into his mouth as I orgasm suddenly, and he lets me, not gagging, swallowing repeatedly, making everything feel so much more intense. My mind and body explode in pleasure, the orgasm washing over me and rattling me to the bone, and him, god, it’s all him, swallowing my come, wanting me, pleasuring me, being here with me.

He pulls back when I finally stop, my cock slipping out of his mouth. Jesus fucking Christ. His swollen lips press against my hipbone where he bites down, groaning feverishly. He jerks, and my inner thighs get hit with his semen. I keep a hand on the back of his neck, rubbing with the little sense I have left, for comradeship, for the celebration of mutual orgasms, for the warm and fuzzy contentment spreading in me.

He rolls over and lands on the messy sheets next to me, breathing hard. “So.” He licks his lips slowly, tongue darting out sinfully. “You were saying something about your incredible stamina.”

“Like you can brag,” I say, trying to clear the haze from my head. “I just didn’t want you to be late for work.”

“So considerate.”

I reach over to touch his soft hair, wanting to pull him close and make out for hours though I know that we can’t. “I’m a gentleman, baby.”

He laughs. “You’re unreal, is what you are.”

“Why thank you.” I try to sound smug. He looks at me, eyes laughing as he smacks my hand away. He gets out of bed, his cock still half-hard. I don’t bother moving or covering up anything. He’s gorgeous moving around my room with nothing but slight sweat on his skin...

“Hey. Ryan.” A warm hand shakes my shoulder, and I open my eyes, trying to fight off the post-coital slumber I slipped into. He’s now fully dressed, leaning over me.

“Stay,” I manage. It’s our time right now. Shane’s working at Eric’s, Keltie’s at practice, whereas him and I, the ones that live for the night time, are free. I’m not needed at the studio just yet, and he’s not working during the day, so who knows where we are, who we are spending our time with. We could steal another hour. He could be a bit late.

“Can’t,” he responds, leaning down to kiss me. “I’ll call you.”

“Yeah, you better.”

He calls me since I live alone, but I’m hardly ever here so arranging dates is annoyingly time consuming. He doesn’t want me calling his place since Shane could pick up. I could come up with something work related if that happened, an excuse or another. But he doesn’t want that, and I get it, even if I think he’s being paranoid about it.

“What about next Thursday?” I ask sleepily.

“I’ve got stuff to do before work.”

“After work.”

“Busy. Sorry.” He kisses me again, his hand sliding to my chest, resting over my heart. Like he knows. “Soon.”

“Will you miss me?”

He smiles against my mouth. “Immensely.”

“Good.”

I taste him on my lips long after he’s gone.


	2. Nocturnal As We Are

Pretend they’re not there. How the hell am I supposed to pretend that the huge video cameras around the table aren’t there? Can anyone act normal given the circumstances?

Five drinks in, yes.

We’re just a few guys playing cards in the studio lounge, taking a break from recording. I’m not keeping tabs on what we’ve done for the album so far. Don’t want to think about it. It’s four or five in the morning, maybe, and we’re the only ones left: the band, Shane, Eric and I. Eric came by to say hi, but he didn’t distract us – we were already distracted. Shane’s had a few drinks, but he keeps the two tripod-attached cameras recording while he now holds the third, moving about, focusing in on different people. Jon’s laughing hard into his hands, and Patrick is staring at his cards thoughtfully. Gabe’s dealing, and Eric swears that Gabe’s giving him shit hands on purpose.

I’m great at poker. No need to worry at all.

A week. The nagging voice inside my head doesn’t let me forget it: we’ve been recording for over a week. And what do we have to show for it? What triumphs can we celebrate? Random drum takes and some recorded guitar parts. A quarter of a song somewhere. Maybe. And the songs, these songs that have been circling inside me for so long, sounded nothing like they’re meant to. The band’s frustrated because I can’t tell them what’s wrong. It just hasn’t been right. But we’ve got time, plenty of it. It’s only been a week. These days people take years to record anything. No one’s pressuring me. It’s fine. It’s certainly not a problem.

I drink up and look at my cards, study the crude features of the king of hearts. It’s got exaggerated lips. Brendon’s deep asleep right now, back in the Brooklyn apartment. Soft, even breaths passing through his full lips. The other side of the bed is empty. When he reaches out for another body, it’s not Shane he’s looking for. It’s me.

“Ryan, focus!” Eric tells me, all business like. He takes cards very seriously, which Gabe endlessly takes the piss out of.

“Lost in his thoughts again,” Jon says teasingly, and Shane’s camera is aimed at me as I duck my head, hair falling out of place. 

“Shane,” I say, and the guy looks from behind the camera. I kick back one of the chairs. “Put that thing away and play some cards.”

“But –”

“I wasn’t asking,” I say and stub a cigarette into the ashtray. He hasn’t been filming all along but he concluded that us playing showed a more relaxed and humane version of us. He’s very specific about what he actually wants to film, sticking to a documentary sketch he and the lawyers have drafted. It’ll be a mix of backstage scenes, interviews, and us playing the songs once we get on tour. If we ever get there. If we ever.

Shane’s good at poker, but not as good as the rest of us, and I can’t help but grin when Shane folds, losing his twenty bucks. Brendon won’t be pleased with that. Shane knocks down a beer, looking forlorn.

“How’s the crew hunt going?” Jon asks with an easy, drunken smile as he folds. He looks at the stack of bills on the table, probably realising that he’s just lost the money that he was supposed to spend on a kitten for Cassie.

“Good,” Shane shrugs. “We’ve got a production team, and we’re looking for people to come to the studio and the road with us. Hired Brendon yesterday.” He takes a sip of his beer.

I stare. “You hired Brendon?”

“Yeah. He can handle the equipment every bit as well as me.” He looks nervous, like we’d object. Like I’d object. We all know they’re an item, even if it’s never explicitly said in public. Well, Eric might not know, but that’s because Eric doesn’t care about his non-famous friends.

I’m not objecting. It means that Brendon will come on tour with us. He’s coming on tour. I won’t have to spend weeks without seeing him after all. And to the studio, he’ll be coming here too. Fuck, seeing Brendon just got so much easier.

“That’s great,” I laugh. That’s fucking great, even if I realise that Shane is milking the project for all it’s worth. Shane gets paid and so does Brendon. A family enterprise.

Shane relaxes. “Yeah. It’ll be good to spend more time with him.” He focuses on the game that Patrick, Eric and I are still playing, and that’s when I realise the downside of Brendon’s secondary employment: his free time’s just gotten cut short, having been taken over by a lot of Shane. And that isn’t great. Brendon can’t be with me if he needs to be working with Shane. Although knowing Brendon and knowing the thing we’ve got – knowing us – he took the job to see me more. Just three days ago, he said it, just as I pushed into him. That he needs to see me more. His nails dragging down my back.

And now he’s on the film crew.

Sneaky fucker.

Patrick folds. Eric looks at me murderously.

I say, “Maybe you should call him right now. Invite him over,” and Shane says, “Nah, he’ll be asleep, poor thing. He’s tired a lot these days. He gets these migraines,” and I hum and bite on my lower lip not to grin. Wear him out, do I?

Gabe is looking at me knowingly, but I give nothing away. Gabe knows. Probably. Most likely. He’s asked about it, but I’m holding my peace. It doesn’t concern Gabe, regardless of how hard he tried to make it happen for us. No. This one, him and I, I’m not sharing with anyone.

“Ryan. Time to show me what you’ve got,” Eric says, and I come back down to earth, looking at my cards. I’ve got a pair of kings and a lot of nothing.

“Score,” Eric grins as he reaches for the pot in the middle.

“Must hurt, man,” Gabe laughs as Eric gets out his already bulging wallet, eager to introduce the newcomers to the family.

“Don’t care,” I shrug.

“You’re not in touch with finance,” Eric tells me sternly.

“Probably not. Vicky takes care of that.” I light a new cigarette, only then realising that Jon, Patrick and Shane all look like they’ve been robbed.

“Cas’ll be pissed,” Jon says, and Shane nods like he’s going to get a word from his better half too. Patrick’s single but still seems sorry for himself. His paycheck for his new job is clearly still in the mail.

“You lost _two_ hundred bucks and could’ve won a fuck load more,” Eric tells me, now counting the money feverishly to see how much he’s gained. I have no idea how much money I put in; I just emptied whatever was in my wallet.

“Eh.”

“You really don’t care?” Eric asks with disdain. “Well. Must be nice being as rich as you.” He sounds disapproving, although it’s not like he’s poor. He’s got a chain of record stores, and I know he’s rolling in it.

“What?” I ask, seeing he’s unhappy.

“It just.” He leans back in his chair. “It doesn’t feel like a victory if you’re not upset.”

“So you want to see me suffer. A real friend you are.”

Gabe says, “Ryan shouldn’t gamble for money. It doesn’t affect him. No, he should gamble for something else.” He’s got a mischievous look on his face that’s up to no good.

“Well, go on,” I tell him. “Say I take my money back and lose something else instead. What do you want? A guitar? Vicky’s private phone number?”

Gabe is grinning broadly while Eric looks thoughtful. “Well,” Gabe says in this _tone_ , and I cut him off instantly with, “No. Fucking my girlfriend is not okay.”

“Just an idea,” he pouts.

“You should be so lucky.”

Gabe just laughs – teasing me, the fucker. Keltie would never cheat on me. I don’t need to snoop around or fear that she’ll slip or give into temptation. The girl’s in love with me and I make her happy. No more questions needed.

“What if I want your time?” Eric asks me. “Say every ten bucks represents an hour, so twenty hours.”

I laugh. “God, Eric. I’m touched.” He’s grinning, and Jon’s got a look on his face like he might see where this is going. I don’t. “You want twenty hours, you’ve got them.”

“Shake on it.”

I reach over the table to grasp his hand, and the second I do, he says, “Great! Seems like I’ve got a new employee.”

The guys burst out laughing as I pull my hand back. “ _What?_ ” I seethe.

“Don’t worry, I’ll let you choose your own shifts.”

“I am _not_ –”

“Working at one of Eric’s Record Stores,” he beams.

“My management will never allow it.”

“You shook on it, man!” Jon laughs.

I stare at them in horror. I will be murdered there. What the fuck?

“A deal’s a deal,” Eric says with finality, but if he thinks for a second that I will go work for him, he’s kidding himself. The guys don’t seem to be able to get over my sudden demotion from rock star to retail, and even Shane’s grinning like I’m his colleague now, but I’m not. Gabe says that I brought this on myself. I didn’t. I thought Eric would want some contacts or some shit. And the album, what about the album?

“Your face right now,” Jon grins. “I wish I had a camera.”

“Oh!” Shane exclaims, looking overly enthusiastic in his puppy way. “Oh. Oh, you do!” He gets up quickly, chair legs scratching the floor, and he hurries to a box that he brought in earlier. “These are, uh, one of the latest features of the film project. Here. One for each.” He’s piled up Polaroid cameras on his arms and now passes them around.

“These are far out!” Patrick says and immediately snaps a picture of us. A small square comes out at the front of the bulky camera, and he snatches it and waves it in the air.

Shane babbles, “We thought they’d add a nice, personal touch to the documentary. You can take pictures of whatever in the studio, on tour, back home. ”

“Who’s we?” I ask as I take mine. I’ll use up the film taking pictures of myself giving the camera the middle finger.

“Brendon and me. They were his idea.” Shane sits back down. “He’s got some great ideas for this project. It’s been great working with him.” He’s beaming. I’d want to laugh, but don’t. He’s so sweet, our Shane. Getting excited about some Brendon time. He’s so clueless, our Shane, thinking that the time spent together means anything to Brendon, when I know that Brendon’s completely and utterly and madly –

“Say cheese!” Gabe says and takes my picture, startling me. “Eric can use this one for the employee of the month shot!”

“Die, Saporta.”

They laugh.

I wonder how much time Shane and Brendon have spent together recently. It’s clearly more than I thought.

Shane thinks he can take Brendon away from me? That’s a laugh.

I’ll show him who’s running this show.

* * *

The limousine is parked in the narrow back alley, like pearl for swine. It glistens in the midnight rain, and the chauffeur is all the way at the street corner, smoking with his back turned, just like I told him to.

“Come on,” I repeat, holding the door open, and Brendon laughs. He’s wearing the black polo shirt that all the bar staff wear, and he clearly didn’t think he’d get to spend his break like this.

“How inconspicuous,” he says as he gets into the limo.

I say, “I invented subtlety,” and follow. He brushes water out of his hair, eyes smirking as I close the door.

“Clearly,” he says, leaning into the backseat and looking around the limo like he’s a millionaire’s son and used to such thrills, but then he just laughs. “Well, this is new.”

The limo is Vicky’s doing entirely, to transport me between the studio and my apartment with style. I don’t care for it personally, but right now it has some plusses to it. “You like it?” I ask, and he just makes a funny face like he didn’t expect to find himself in a limo ever. Then he focuses on me like he remembers now – me, yeah – and his eyes darken. My skin feels hot the second he touches it, crawling into my lap like a feline. His knees dig into the seat by my sides, his ass resting on my thighs.

“Don’t care if this was the back of the shittiest van,” he says, and Shane’s van comes to mind. He leans in closer. “It’s the company that matters.”

He’s got a point there. His lips are dry as they meet mine, and he smells like cigarettes and sweat. Not his own this time, but the general stench of the club. I don’t mind it, but I much prefer him different. I love him shower fresh, when his skin feels so soft, or after sex, when he smells fucking incredible, a bit like me. I grab the back of his head and pull him in, coaxing his mouth open. He tastes like orange juice with a hint of vodka. Drinking on the job, clearly, but all of that is secondary and insignificant as I relax against him, my tongue slowly brushing over his.

Haven’t seen him in two days. I hate that. Hate the waiting. Hate the thoughts that haunt me as I wait, the ones that vanish when we’re reunited. It all makes sense when he’s around, but when he goes, the certain things don’t seem so certain anymore.

“It _is_ suspicious,” he says teasingly when he pulls back from the languid, greeting kiss. “I mean, it’s better than you walking into the club, but a suit wearing chauffeur coming to collect me is probably raising eyebrows as we speak.”

“At least I told him to park two blocks down,” I argue, pushing closer to reconnect our lips. Shane already left the studio a few hours ago, cutting his night short like he had said he would. I made up some excuse about not feeling well and jumped ship after another day of failed recording. “I’m here to steal you away,” I whisper.

“Are you now?” His tongue is slowly grazing my bottom lip as our lips hover. My heart’s beating fast, a knot in my guts loosening. He sighs. “I can’t. Not today. I told you.”

“But I thought you were finishing early tonight.”

“I am, but I’ve got plans.” His hands are pressed against my chest, now slipping downwards to my belt. “I can, however, take an extended break.” He looks wicked like a little boy about to steal something he knows isn’t his. And it’s not his, but he’s got a pretty decent claim to it.

“What plans?” I ask, pushing his hands away. I don’t mind if it’s documentary stuff. We talked about it after I found out about his new job, and Brendon’s hardly a co-director or co-anything – more like an errand boy. And it’s not just exclusively him and Shane now that the film crew is nearly complete, and it’s not like – not like I’m worried or bothered by it. I just know what day it is. I just know that his plans are not professional at all.

Hair has fallen in front of his eyes, and he doesn’t say anything. He scratches his head, looking awkward. I want him to say it. “Well, it’s just. Um. Sort of a special or – I mean, not special, like... special, but it’s. Well, it’s my anniversary with Shane, actually.”

“Oh. That. Almost forgot about it.”

He stares. “You know?”

“Two years.” I let my thumb gently brush over his moist lower lip. “Am I right?”

He looks surprised. “Yeah.” He doesn’t sound sad or guilty, just taken aback. “He told you?”

“He did. You didn’t.”

“Well, I – I just. I didn’t. I mean, should I have?”

I shrug. Maybe not. Probably not, but that’s not the point. “You know you can tell me anything at all.” And not mentioning implies that it means something to him. So he should tell me, tell me weeks before it happens.

“I know that.” He laughs slightly, embarrassed. “It’s just slightly confusing sometimes.”

“I don’t see what’s confusing about it,” I tell him flatly. There’s me and Keltie, and then there’s me and Brendon. They are two completely independent spheres, and I’ve been neglecting Keltie a hell of a lot recently. I know that. I bought her a diamond bracelet to make up for it, and then I met up with Brendon and fucked him. I don’t see why Brendon would find the different spheres complicated, but at least it explains why he didn’t immediately say that it was their nominal anniversary. He wasn’t trying to keep it from me as such. Maybe he just doesn’t know that _I_ know full well where Shane’s place in this equation is.

Before he gets to say anything else, I place one hand on the small of his back, the other wrapped around his neck, and I swiftly tip us over to lie down on the seat. I capture his lips before he can speak. His hips buck upwards, and I grind against him, hard and ruthless. His lips aren’t dry anymore, but moist and sweet, a forbidden apple for me to devour. I wonder if this is what he has planned for later.

“You think he’s gonna fuck you tonight?” I ask, setting up a rhythm.

“Probably,” he groans, head dipping backwards and exposing a gorgeous stripe of his throat. I kiss him there, my teeth sinking in. I’d want to draw out blood, but know I can’t mark him. Not that visibly.

“You think he’s gonna fuck you as well as I do?”

His cock is hardening in his jeans, the outline a source of pleasure as I grind down. My cock’s hard, has been since we parked. “No,” he gasps, and I bite on his neck. No. Of course not.

“And you’ll think about me all the way through.”

“I know. Fuck,” he swears. His hands are uncoordinated, twisting the shirt at my back, and deep, guttural groans leave his parted lips. I could get him off right here in the back of the limousine. Could make him come without even undressing him.

“If I fucked you right now, he’d notice, wouldn’t he?” My lips hover over his ear, and my tongue darts out to trace his earlobe. He shivers. It’s nonsensical, the way we can turn each other on. Anything. Toe sucking, thigh biting. Touch. As long as there’s touch. “He’d notice you all slick and loose. He’d smell me _all_ fucking over you.”

“Yes,” he gasps, and I feel dark. Whatever it is, it’s dark, a sensation deep in my guts. Wanting to be a presence that lingers on him wherever he goes. Making it impossible for him to forget. And, most of all, others could sense it too. Backing off, knowing that this one is off limits.

Why would he find any of this confusing? I’ve never known anything as crystal clear in my life.

He’s hard as hell now, like I knew he’d be. I kiss him hard, my tongue pushing in, and I grind against him harder, faster, adding a circular movement that causes him to mumble incomprehensibly.

Then I stop.

He gasps for air, pupils blown. My hand slides down his side, feeling his taunt body, the way it curves, the muscle and bone. I remain above him but lift myself to lose the body contact. “I don’t want this,” I tell him, and he looks confused. “Getting you off on your break in the backseat of a car. We’re not goddamned teenagers.”

“It was working for me,” he says, voice husky. “And, you know, this is a limo. That makes it all kinds of classy, it almost –”

“I want to fuck you. In my bed. Want you on your hands and knees, your hands bound to the headboard, and then I want to fuck you. For hours. Won’t let you come no matter how close you get. Want to do it tonight. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Tonight. That’s what I want.” I swallow hard, reassemble my thoughts. “Thing is, you can’t be in two places at once.”

He’s reached down to rub himself, clearly hoping to get off as I fill his head with visuals that drive me just as insane. I snatch his hand. “Nuh uh.”

He groans in frustration. “You’re such a prick.”

“Can be, yeah.” I stare down at him. Wait for an answer. “Come to my place after work.”

I don’t add please.

“Ry, I told you...” he whispers. I hope that he feels the longing that I feel. Of course – of _course_ – he does. He wouldn’t have to stay all night, and he could come up with excuses. A co-worker had to go home early because they got sick, Brendon had to stay behind and cover for them, and so on, and so on. It comes down to what he chooses. Who he chooses. He says a quiet and breathless, “Alright.”

Alright. Good choice. That’s a damn fantastic choice.

“I’ll be waiting, then,” I tell him, ignoring the rather strong sense of accomplishment. Not like I’m surprised that he chose me.

We get out of the limo, him having fixed his appearance the best he can. “See you,” he tells me, plain flirtatious and eyes sparkling. I smirk after him, my gaze focusing on his ass as he goes. God _damn_.

When the driver comes back, I nod after Brendon and say, “My dealer.” The driver’s expression clears up like it finally makes sense to him, what just happened, and he looks the tiniest bit relieved.

* * *

I stay by the doorway, watching him play. His shoulder blades move as his fingers dance over the keys, peaceful and beautiful. He hasn’t switched on the lights, but an orange glow shines in from the street. The white bed sheet has looped around his waist. I must have fallen asleep, woken up in a dream.

He doesn’t hear me crossing the room as he plays. The music woke me up in the first place. It’s classical music, Chopin, and he’s not just playing any piece by the Pole, but the one. The only piece of music that kept playing in my head for weeks after the crash: _Nocturne No.2 in E flat_.

It doesn’t have the chilling effect on me that it once had. By playing it, he’s attaching the music to something else. To this moment instead. And I much prefer this moment.

His fingers come to a graceful stop, gently resting on the keys. He stills like he stops existing when the music does. Ivory skin, ebony hair, and the shadows dance on the contours of his back.

“Hey.”

He starts and looks over his shoulder. “Hi. Shit, sorry if I woke you, I –”

“I’m glad you did.”

He smiles, looking embarrassed. “How long you been standing there?” He sounds shy, almost, his hands withdrawing from the keys. As I walk over, he reaches out to press a hand against my bare stomach, his thumb absently brushing the waistband of my boxers.

“Long enough.” I brush stray hairs behind his ear. “You sound good.”

“I’m really rusty.”

“Could’ve fooled me. Move over.” He obeys, and I sit on the bench next to him, our bare shoulders pressing together.

“I haven’t gotten the chance to play in a long time,” he says, still trying to explain it when he doesn’t have to.

“Don’t let me stop you,” I say quietly. He hesitates for a second before his fingers land on the keys once more, and he begins to play. Not Chopin this time. Something else. Something his. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. That this one, this particular one, he composed himself. It doesn’t last for long, maybe a minute, his hands gliding over the keys masterfully, and then he stops like he doesn’t remember the rest anymore. There’s nothing he isn’t amazing at. “You’re a great pianist.”

He shrugs like he’s not so sure. “Dad taught me.” His words sound strained. It takes an effort, mentioning his dad at all. I see him there: aged ten, crooked glasses, overgrown hair, sitting next to his dad on the bench the way we are now. He was trying to take in the information. Start from somewhere. _Für Elise_ , most likely. He was trying so hard to get it right. Please his old man, who looked on with pride.

I press my nose against his shoulder, breathe him in. Let him know he’s still here and he’s fine. We shouldn’t think about that man and what he did. What matters is where we are, and he’s with me, and he’s fine now. 

“You should have it.”

“Have what?”

“The piano.” I press a kiss to his slightly clammy skin. “I’ll give it to you.”

He laughs softly. “I wonder what Shane would think of that.”

I move closer to him, placing a trail of kisses from his shoulder to his neck and up to his cheek. He sighs placidly, turns his head towards me, his lips meeting mine softly. “He’d think that you’ve sure got one very appreciative lover,” I whisper, our lips slowly brushing.

He smiles, his fingertips dancing on the back of my neck. “That’s a theory.”

I feel light-headed and well-grounded at the same time, a sensation of being stupid and carefree yet blessed as we laugh against each other’s mouths. We don’t talk about them. The others. Not really. We know they’re there, of course we do, and we don’t pretend they’re not. It wouldn’t be an affair if the others slipped our minds. If we could pretend it’s just us. We get close to the point sometimes, but we’ve never fully crossed the line. Or at least he hasn’t.

He focuses on the piano again, brows knitting together. I ask, “Was that your own music you just played?”

“Yeah.”

“It was good.”

He looks shy. “Thanks. With the documentary money coming in, I’m going to put some aside. Book a studio to do a proper demo this spring. I haven’t had the time to jam with Ian in forever, but we’ll get on it.” It sounds like he wants me to know he’s going somewhere with it all. That he has plans. Bartending might not be a huge step from waiting tables, but he’s got a changed mentality now. Ideas brewing under his skin. I can sense it.

“Well, I know studios. If you want me to make a few calls –”

He instantly stops playing. “No.” He sounds stern and his eyes narrow as he looks at me.

“No what?”

“No charity.”

“It wouldn’t be charity to help out a friend,” I argue. “You’re busy right now. You could do with a helping hand. I mean, there’s the bartending, the documentary work, the gig promotion, then me...”

“You take up a lot of time,” he smirks.

“Why rush a good thing?” I ask quietly with a kiss pressed to his jaw where the stubble tickles my lips.

“Maybe because I need to go home soon,” he says. And I know. Of course I know, living on borrowed time. He’s already late beyond a perfect excuse, and I wonder what he’ll say, how he’ll cover it up. He has to go. It always ends the exact same way.

“I’ll give you money for a cab.”

“Ryan –”

“It’s late, you’re late, and Brooklyn’s far away.” He looks displeased, and I press a random key to distract myself. “You think he’ll give you a hard time for it?”

“He’ll be pissed off.” He sounds matter-of-factly and not particularly worried by the prospect. “Let’s not talk about it, though.” I have no problem with that. “And I can find my own way home.”

“Just money for a cab, Bren.”

He sits up straighter like he wants to appear taller than he is. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

“I know that.” My fingers meet his on the keys, and my thumb brushes over his knuckles. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t let me.”

“Well,” he says, getting up and grabbing the sheets, keeping them around his lower half. “You take care of my orgasms. That’s doing a lot already as it is.” He smirks down at me, and I let him cross the room, the dimples above his behind visible as the sheets pool down at his back. His bare feet barely make a sound as he moves.

The music room feels pathetically empty the second he leaves it.

When I join him, he’s looking for his clothes in the bedroom, having discarded the sheet. I see his shirt peaking from under a pillow. The bed looks like it’s been hit by an atom bomb. We made a mess. I love it when we do. He swears under his breath when he sees the time on the nightstand clock, but I don’t feel guilty. Not really. I don’t lose if he has a fight with Shane. On the contrary.

He looks like an apparition in my bedroom, and my gaze focuses on his perfect, pale ass. I smirk, reaching for the Polaroid camera that I haven’t done anything with yet, simply having dumped it on top of the dresser on the day Shane gave it to me. “Hey,” I call out, and Brendon turns around, hair sticking out all over. I snap his picture before he can react.

His eyes widen. “You did not just –”

“Polaroids. Your idea, huh?” I take the picture coming out at the front, still grinning.

“I’m _naked_.”

“Oh trust me, I know.”

“Give it to me!”

“No.” I snap another.

It ends up in a scuffle and us rolling on the bed, laughing as he attempts to get the pictures from my grip, but I don’t let him. Memories. Something to look at when he’s gone. Just some proof. “You fucking cunt,” he swears when he realises he’s lost and is beneath me and still naked but now hard just like I am. We reach for each other simultaneously, the air full of the urgency of a half-desperate quickie.

A damn good anniversary if you ask me.

* * *

I am fifteen minutes late to Eric’s Record Store on my first day, and I’m late on goddamn purpose.

Eric ended up making some concessions for my punishment. Although I tried, I couldn’t weasel out of it altogether. He’s put me to work in the original Eric’s Record Store and none of the bigger ones that get more customers. This one is the safest option, although I fully resent twenty hours of honest work. Me? Slaving away like a commoner? Unheard of.

Vicky was appalled enough when she found out, and I could just say no. I could. But if I don’t do it, the guys will never let me hear the end of it. Better deal with this punishment, get it over and done with, and tell them it was nothing. Emerge on the other side as victorious.

But what makes this spectacle even worse is that Shane Valdes is, for this lousy afternoon, my superior.

He doesn’t act like it, thankfully, as he brings us cups of coffee from the backroom and shows me around the shop. It’s a tiny place with past and upcoming tour posters on the walls, the small counter located in the back with the door to the backroom behind it, and everything in between is filled with records, new and second-hand. The second-hand ones are in unorganised stacks, but the new vinyl records are in alphabetical order. Shane emphasises how important Eric thinks it is.

“Bands starting with ‘The’ are in whatever comes after. So, The Followers, you will find in F.” Shane pulls out our first album, stares at it in awe for a second, then snaps out of it and puts it away nervously. “Then artists go by surname. Harry Nilsson is in –”

“N.”

“Exactly.”

The job is a demotion, certainly, and I dread someone walking in and recognising me. It will happen. Of course it will, and if word spreads that I’m apparently working at Eric’s, I’ll end up dealing with fans all day long. That’s the real punishment, and we all know it.

But at least I don’t have to be in the studio. My so-called shifts are irregular, but they will take away studio time. I don’t have to be there, snapping at Gabe that he’s doing it wrong, telling Patrick that he’s a talentless nobody and informing Jon that this is _not_ what we talked about.

The music isn’t working out. We’ve put so much effort into the preparations, practising, fine-tuning, and now the sound we’re producing is incongruous. It’s like we’ve hit a brick wall. Bob keeps saying that he thinks it sounds good, but Jon was man enough to admit that it’s not what he had in mind. Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s the music. We worked on it for so long that we outgrew it.

I don’t know what we’re doing wrong, and surprisingly, Eric’s Record Store feels like a breath of fresh air. The store is empty because it’s not open yet. Shane sits behind the counter, sipping coffee and clearly trying to wake up some. He looks exhausted. He’s lost weight too. He’s working himself to death, as he should. My cup rests on the counter as I stand on the other side.

“You know how to work the register?” Shane asks, and of course I do. “You need to write down whatever you sell here, that way we know which ones are selling and what we need to order more of.” Shane sounds like he’s stuck trying to think of what to say. He didn’t have that problem when we first met, right on this same spot. He couldn’t shut the fuck up. Back then I had no idea who he was. Back then Brendon was loyal to him for whatever reason. I didn’t have much of a chance at first, but I prevailed. I won. I got the boy. Shane still hasn’t realised it, doesn’t have a clue, and that’s exactly why I ended up winning. For being more observant. For being smarter.

He says, “I’d like to interview you sometime soon.” He looks down at his coffee when he says it.

“There’s no rush.”

He falls silent like I killed the conversation he hoped to start. After an uncomfortable silence, he says, “I interviewed some of the fans that are staying outside the studio. I thought it’d add a nice contrast.” He scratches his chin. “Some of them are kind of intense. I mean... some of them are really obsessed.” He looks up with wondering eyes. “How does that make you feel?”

“Sounds like an interview question.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I guess.” He checks his wristwatch, and I see the small hand slowly getting closer to the hour. I haven’t been up this early since 1969.

“So did you and Bren have a good anniversary last week?” I ask conversationally with enough boredom to indicate that our dead conversation is the only thing pushing me to ask about something as dull as Shane’s boyfriend. Shane’s expression darkens. “Aw,” I say. “Don’t tell me you had a fight.”

Please, please tell me you had one hell of a row. I can only gain from their strained relations.

“It was nothing,” he says, shrugging it off. Sure it was nothing, Brendon vanishing under the radar for unexplained hours. Maybe I can get Shane to leave Brendon – well, maybe. Shane keeps looking at Brendon so fucking adoringly that it’s not likely. And I don’t need them to break up, of course not. It hardly matters that they share a refrigerator and possibly a toothbrush. “He got stuck at work,” Shane shrugs, and I fight off the self-satisfied grin. At work, was he? Brendon could get away with murder. “He made up for it, though.” Shane’s eyeing a copy of the staff list that he’s taken out, focused on it while every hair on my skin seems to be sticking out suddenly.

“He did?”

“Yeah.” Shane looks up eventually and seems surprised that I’m staring at him, waiting. “Oh. Um.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” I say instantly with a short laugh. “You don’t wanna tell me, I get it. Not my business.” I push just the right buttons, too, because Shane looks alarmed, worried that he’s pissed me off when all he wants to do is please.

“He just prepared a romantic dinner for two the other night, that’s all.”

“That’s... nice.” I force out the words. Nice in the way that a lobotomy must be nice. “Roses and candles? The whole nine yards?”

“Yeah.”

Roses, candles and the whole nine yards. The other night? But... Brendon said that he was working. I rake through my brain, and he _definitely_ said he would be working at the club, but now Shane is telling me that he wasn’t. He was at home, winning Shane back over with roses, candles and the lot, like sweaty love-making and marinara sauce, attending to all of Shane’s needs.

I asked Brendon if he was free. I ask him the same question about every damn day. He said he wasn’t free because he was working. He lied. That’s alright, we all lie, but he lied to _me_. Since when has he done that? Because there are the others, the ones we’re fooling, and then there’s us, who know the truth. The truth about me and him. The truth about us. Romantic dinners with Shane do not fit into that equation.

“Time to open up,” Shane smiles, finishing the rest of his coffee. He rounds the counter and heads for the door, pushing hair behind his ears, and there’s a bruise right there below his left ear. Brendon likes biting down there when he comes. I know that.

Shane knows that.

A few kids stroll into the shop, and Shane flips the Open/Closed sign.

He and I have more in common than I’m willing to admit.


	3. Mere Humans

“Fuck,” I swear. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_!”

Unceremoniously and without warning, I grab the guitar with both hands and throw it onto the studio floor. It bangs loudly but doesn’t break as it settles onto the ugly, striped rug. A string breaks, brushing against the others with a metallic sound. I put my hands on my hips and grit my teeth. The pain radiates up and down my arm, and I look through the glass to the control room where Jon, Greta and Bob look at me like they’re not impressed.

“It wasn’t meant to sound like that!” I try to explain, stepping away from the fucking microphones that are probably no longer recording, anyway. I march to the other side of the studio and sit on a tall stool, furiously going through my pockets for cigarettes.

“That’s alright,” Bob’s voice comes through the speaker. “We’ll take a break.”

“Damn right we will,” I mutter.

Gabe’s off fucking one of his sluts – male or female, who knows – while Patrick is sleeping in the lounge. It might be morning outside for all I know. I came to the studio after sunset last night, and it’s been hours and hours, useless, all of them. I take deep drags of the cigarette, the headache killing me, my arm killing me, but I say nothing of the physical pain. The emotional pain is pain enough, and they don’t – They don’t need to know about it. About the bad elbow.

The door opens slowly, and neither Jon nor Bob is visible through the window anymore. Greta is walking in, a hint of hesitance in her step. The hem of her dress moves gracefully around her ankles, locks of her hair falling to her shoulders over the red flower patterns. She looks upset, like a kid does when she first realises that his father or mother is drunk. It’s a bad thing, being drunk. I’m not drunk. Had a few beers, sure, but not any more than Jon or Bob there, and were I inebriated, the pain wouldn’t feel quite so bad.

Greta sits down on the stool next to mine, eyeing the room peacefully. “You alright?” she asks eventually.

“Don’t I seem alright?” I counter venomously, though it’s not her fault. She did some of her vocals a few hours back, and right now she seems like the only person who has come into the studio and recorded what they were meant to.

“No. You don’t seem alright.” She reaches out to grab my hand and pulls it to her lap. Her nimble fingers lace with mine, her hand warm and soft, my own bony and hard. She holds my hand with both hands, examining it, almost. My elbow throbs with pain as I extend my arm, but I don’t let it show.

It’s nothing a few pain killers can’t sort out.

Spencer got a scar in the car crash. He hit his right temple when he fell out of his bunk, and that’s why it seemed like his entire face was covered in blood. The cut wasn’t deep or dangerous, but we didn’t know that because he was unconscious. We just saw the blood. The other injuries were worse. They stitched him up and told him it’d leave a scar. I’ve never seen it because I haven’t seen him, but when I close my eyes, it’s there: a red line by his hairline, slowly fading year by year, but never vanishing completely. Those are the spoils he gained in the war. I got plenty of small cuts on my face: all the glass. Nothing permanent, though. And I thought I walked away with nothing to show for it, nothing but the cast and the physical therapy and then the physical therapist who quit when I told her to go fuck herself and threw the guitar at her after another failed attempt to barre a fucking fret.

Turns out I didn’t get away with it that easy. My elbow showed no signs of protest during our practice sessions, not even after hours of messing around. Now, when it’s every day, sometimes even for twenty straight hours that I’m locked in here, the pain’s appeared. My fingers stumble. I make mistakes.

“Maybe you should take the day off. Tomorrow too,” Greta suggests, but I know that I can’t. The entire album recording halts if I’m not here. She’s cradling my hand with her own, and it’s doing wonders to relax me. Let some of the frustration pour out. She starts explaining that she’s giving me a hand massage that she learned from her spiritual guide and that it helps tune in with the universe.

“I can’t take the day off,” I sigh to stop her from talking utter bullshit, still persistently smoking with my free hand.

“It’s an escape for you, being here.” She looks around the room. “Then you don’t have to think about it.”

I unwillingly pull my hand back. “Think about what?”

She shrugs. “I can’t read minds.” She grabs my hand again like she has decided to ignore my body language. “You’ve been so happy,” she says and sounds slightly sad.

“It’s just this album.”

She hums agreeingly. She probably knows I’m lying, but I’m not. It’s this album too, and not just whatever pathetic little turmoil occurs outside the studio.

I’ve been avoiding Brendon, and I know that. I need to keep my questions to myself because I know him, and he doesn’t like questions. It just throws me off. I mean, when did he decide that we were just mere humans? Because I swear that for a while there we were gods. We were better than other people, we had an understanding. We spoke without words, and it was all crystal clear, perfect harmony. Me and him.

When he decided to lie, he should have done it like a god. Be smart enough for me to not find out. But he couldn’t do it. He’s just human. And if he’s just human, then so am I.

It’s disappointing beyond words.

“It’s the fans outside, isn’t it?” Greta then suggests sympathetically, and I nod. Sure it is. It’s not like it’s a mob, but maybe ten or so lost souls. Not always the same ones because even they have work and sleep, but they wait there for any of us, me the most. They keep sending random gifts into the studio: cakes, flowers, cards... One card said, ‘I knew you weren’t dead, Ryan.’, and I’m not sure what that meant, if they meant musically dead or emotionally dead or physically dead. I put that card in my wallet in any case. Folded it real nice. Take it out sometimes: a kid out there knows I’m not dead. That’s something. That counts.

I’m not yet an endangered species, but I feel like one.

“Cheer up,” Greta says with a warm smile. “They’re only excited, that’s why they camp out there. We’re all really excited. Anything you do is going to be amazing.”

I laugh emptily at that, and she frowns like that’s not what she wanted. I don’t want to make her feel like shit on top of everything else, so I say, “Thanks, Greta. Glad someone has faith in me.” I tug her closer, and she smiles as she stands up and leans in for a hug. Maybe that hand massage wasn’t weed induced mumbo jumbo after all – some of the stress has definitely left my system.

The studio door opens behind Greta’s back, and Bob steps in. It’s only when Keltie follows that I detach myself from Greta swiftly, and knowing that Greta would remain in my space with no apprehension, I stand up, a hand on Greta’s hip guiding her further away from me. Keltie’s smile has vanished, walking into the studio to find me cuddling with the guest star.

“She said it was urgent,” Bob explains as an introduction and then leaves. He gives me an ‘oh you rock stars’ look, clearly thinking that I’m boning both of the women in the room. One for each finger. He flees as he thinks a shit storm is about to take place.

“Kelts,” I say with too big a smile. “What are you doing here?”

She looks like a mess, her usually neat appearance contrasted to her current look of a bomb having exploded on her. Her hair is a mess and she looks distressed, and it’s only then I notice the huge bag she’s carrying. “My apartment’s flooded,” she says, voice quivering. “I woke up this morning, and when I got out of bed, there was this- this splash and –” She cuts herself off like the memory of it will make her cry any second. “All my belongings, all my...” Her voice fades as she pales to a sickly white.

“Oh, that’s horrible! You poor thing!” Greta exclaims, clutching my arm for dramatic effect. “Sit down! Come on, I’ll make you some tea!”

Keltie looks like she’d rather not have Greta dote on her, but then she seems too tired to care. Keltie still doesn’t seem to understand that Greta is too nice to cheat on Butcher, even if I were willing, which I’m not, for the record, but Greta’s genuine worry isn’t the reaction of a mistress, and even Keltie seems to get that in her anguished state.

“Shit, that’s... shit,” I say, taking Keltie’s bag and escorting her to the control room. She plops down on the leather couch, a hand dramatically resting on her forehead as she closes her eyes. Greta’s vanished to the lounge, and I lean against the mixing desk and take in my worried girlfriend.

“I tried calling you,” she says.

“You thought I’d be at home?”

“It’s eleven o’clock, so yeah, I thought you’d be asleep.”

I almost laugh before my eyes land on the clock on the wall: quarter past eleven. I thought it was seven in the morning, maybe, but no. I’ve been in the studio for fourteen hours. That explains at least some of the frustrated anger bubbling in my guts.

“Then I tried calling here to see if you were recording, but the receptionist said that she wasn’t at liberty to say, and I told her who I was, but –” Her voice wavers threateningly, so I quickly cut her off.

“I’ll make damn sure that any calls from you get noted in the future, alright? Come on, now, it’s not too bad.” I move to sit on the couch next to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “We’ll find you a nice hotel. I’ll pay for it. The nicest hotel in town, any place you want.”

“But I –” She wipes her cheeks. “I thought I could stay with you.”

“...And then there’s always that option! Sure!” I kiss the side of her head, smell the rosy scent of her shampoo. Sure. Great. “How long did, um. When will your place be unflooded again, I mean?”

“I don’t know. They said they weren’t sure if it was just one pipe or if they all need to be redone. A few months, they said.”

Oh. Okay.

“It’ll all work out, baby. Don’t you worry your pretty head with it.” I keep up the monologue of assurances as she snuggles into me, soon sipping the tea that Greta brings through for her. Keltie’s shoes look drenched, like she waded in water on her way over here. I promise to make a call to Vicky. It’s my solution to every problem: making it Vicky’s problem. She’ll have Keltie’s belongings rescued and dried and replaced or whatever needs to be done. I don’t like seeing Keltie this upset about anything. And Vicky will make damn sure that Keltie’s apartment is as good as new in a matter of weeks – not months. Don’t care how much that costs me.

Keltie provides me with a reason for a day off, however, without it looking like I’m abandoning the project. Bob and Jon both nod like my place is at Keltie’s side right now, and Bob calls the receptionist, who calls for the security guy to clear the way and for the chauffeur to bring the car around. Maybe a day off isn’t such a bad idea. God knows my arm needs it.

Keltie and I wait in the control room to be informed when the car’s outside. She goes through her bag to find a hair brush and proceeds to straighten her blonde locks while I sit on Bob’s chair by the mixing desk. It’s an awkward silence between us, and I’m not sure why. I wish the others had stayed.

“So what did I walk in on earlier?”

“Come again?” I ask, and Keltie sighs heavily and puts her hands into her lap, her shoulders slumped. She’s usually full of a dancer’s graceful poise.

“With Greta.”

“Keltie,” I say warningly as I shake my head. “We’ve had this conversation.” She remains silent because she knows that I already have heard whatever is going through her mind. “One of these days,” I say, getting out a cigarette and lighting it, “you’re gonna have to start trusting me.”

“It’s them I don’t trust,” she argues.

“Which would be inconsequential if you trusted me.”

Her brown eyes focus on the cigarette. “You know you always smoke when you’re nervous.”

“No, I always smoke,” I correct her, but then leave it be. Neither one of us wants a fight right now. We don’t even fight, really – some arguments or disagreements, sure. I’ve made her cry, and she’s made me feel like shit in return, but we’ve always been a rather harmonious couple. Her irrational fears and my affair aside, I think we’re pretty alright.

“I’m gonna go clean myself up a little,” Keltie says, getting up with a small mascara tube in her grip. I keep smoking – not nervously but languidly – as she exits the control room. I turn around in the chair and look at Bob’s buttons and switches, and then over the desk and into the now empty studio. The room of disappointment. I wonder what it feels like, sitting here hours on end and getting a shit take after another. Me playing the first verse and then fucking up or stopping because it sounds wrong. Bob’s demonstrating infinite patience. Inside he must be this close to offing himself.

The door opens behind me, and I ask, “Good to go?”

“You sure don’t waste time,” a voice says jocularly, and I’m only slightly startled that Brendon’s in the studio. Not like the first time he’s been here – maybe the third now, what with the crew documenting our epically proportioned failures.

I turn around in the chair, and he’s smiling at me like you smile to someone you want to do dirty fucking things to and, what’s more, know that you’re full well allowed to, too. At least he thinks he is.

“Hey.” I stub the rest of my cigarette to Bob’s full ashtray. “What you doing here?” My eyes are focused somewhere on the floor between us.

“Coming to set up for later.”

“Ah, no one’s told you? We won’t be recording later. A day off.” He frowns because there are no days off, and I could tell him about Keltie’s apartment or my veteran arm, but I do neither. I let my fingers run through my hair, getting the locks out of my face. He’s got a bit of stubble on his chin. Looks fucking good on him. “I was just about to head home.”

“Oh.” He gets rid of the initial confusion quickly. “Well, in that case, I’m free as well.” He smiles with the perfect amount of insinuation in it.

I stand up and stuff my hands in my pants pockets. “I’m going home with Keltie, actually. She’s staying with me for a few weeks.”

Something like a frown flickers on his face, but then it’s gone. He can hide it well, whatever he’s feeling. He can flick emotions on and off like a switch. Doesn’t matter who he’s with: a stranger or me. I, well, I can’t do that. I didn’t realise I was expected to do that. He doesn’t need to worry. I’m catching up quickly: just an affair. An insignificant damn thing where we can lie to each other freely and without guilt.

“I’ll catch you later then, yeah?” I offer, but as I try to get past him through the door, he steps in front of me, the frown now back. His lips part, but nothing comes out. It’s not a good sign if he needs to carefully calculate his words. “Did you want something?”

“Well, I – What’s going on?” His hand has settled on my hip, and it feels like it’s all my body and brain can focus on: his fingers slide on the fabric, taking a firm hold.

“Keltie’s apartment got flooded. Old pipes...” I shrug. It feels like my body is filled with a burn slowly scorching me from the inside.

“No, I mean – We’ve. We’ve seen each other once during the past two weeks, and even then it was... I mean, you were.” He looks for the right word before he settles on, “A bit rough. Not that I – You know I love it when you are. But you were... distant.”

“Well,” I say, stepping away from his touch and feeling a pain much stronger than what my arm’s been taunting me with. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to record an album here.”

“I know that,” he says in a ‘don’t insult me’ tone, his brows knitting closer together, and the fire in me mixes with a sickening sensation. And no, this isn’t what I want either. I don’t want to be going home with Keltie, but with him, and I’m tired, so fucking tired of this studio and these songs and these people and this invisible shard of glass sticking out of my chest. “If you’re going to be like that, then fine,” he says.

“Well, okay.”

“Okay.” He crosses his arms.

“Fine.”

“Yeah.”

“See you la –”

He pulls me in for a kiss out of nowhere, a dirty kiss where he pushes his body against mine, his hands on the sides of my face and moving into my hair, locking me in place. I kiss back automatically, my nostrils suddenly full of his scent. His lips move over mine, his tongue darting out to brush against my bottom lip, the signal for me to open up and deepen the kiss, but I don’t obey. “Ryan.” His voice sounds oddly choked. “Fuck, don’t tell me you’re done with me.”

I pull back. “What?”

He looks perfectly serious. He thinks that I suddenly don’t want him anymore? Well, that’s just wrong. That’s fucked up.

“Why would you –” Stupid. Stupid fucking boy. “Don’t think shit like that.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think?” he asks in a challenging tone, but I don’t want to fight him. Fuck, we’re not on the same page at all if he genuinely thinks that.

I still place a quick kiss on his lips but he clings onto me, pulling me in like he needs to feel me kiss him. His lips part, and I can’t resist it, my tongue sliding into his mouth. He wraps his arms around my neck, constantly seeking more contact, coaxing my mouth open more until the lion in me roars, and I pull him in. He lets out a short moan at the back of his throat, kissing me fiercely, but I don’t want us to be just this. And if this is all that this is...

I keep my hands on his narrow hips, pressing my fingers in as I break the kiss. My nose slides across his cheek, and I inhale deeply. “I just need a bit of time right now. There’s stuff I need to figure out.”

His arms have moved down to wrap around my waist, and it feels like we’re standing a bit too close right now. He sighs. “You know you can talk to me. If you’re not okay.”

Sure. That’d be interesting.

“I’ll see you later,” I say, detaching myself. He looks lost, but I’m not much of an explorer right now. He’ll have to figure it out for himself. Maybe we all just need to stick to helping ourselves.

“Okay then.” He fidgets and tries to appear calm, but rejection is visible all over him. He looks over my shoulder at nothing at all. “I miss you. Just so you know.”

Something in my chest expands so much and so quickly that I actually feel short of breath, but I push it out of my mind, my system. He misses the sex. Great.

I smile politely as if to say ‘thanks, that’s nice’.

The limousine waits outside when Keltie and I leave the building, and I don’t think of how confused Brendon looked getting left behind in the studio. Keltie hunches down as I keep my arm around her shoulders, and the fans scream and jump, the handful of them, behind the security guy’s outstretched arms, like he’s an albatross about to take off.

* * *

I think nothing of anything until Keltie’s holding the sheets in her hands. She’s stripped down to a tank top and a pair of my boxers she found in the drawer. Jac also used to do that: help herself to my clothes. I’d mention it if my ex-girlfriend didn’t piss Keltie off. Look, it’s simple: had Jac been all that, we wouldn’t have split up, would we? Still, it’s never advisable to compare a past companion to a current one. We don’t want to fear that the past is not so past perfect after all. Or, in my case, there is no past tense at all. A double present. Both the same. Nothing distinguishing between them.

I tug my tie off like I’m pissed off at it, getting ready to go to bed. I haven’t slept properly in days: a few naps every now and then in the studio or in the limo.

“Have you gotten new cologne?” Keltie asks. She’s sniffing my sheets.

“No.”

“Your sheets smell like –”

“I mean yes. Yeah. Yes, I have.”

She nods slowly, still frowning before it dissolves into a sunny smile. “I like it.” She gets into the sex-stained sheets, and here’s hoping she plans to sleep and not go through every inch square of bedding for come stains because she might be offended that I seem to jack off obscene amounts behind her back. We try not to be too messy, of course, but two guys and multiple rounds, and sometimes Brendon just comes a lot.

Now Keltie lies where Brendon did the last time we saw each other in the capacity in which we always see each other. Was I too rough on him? I don’t remember. I took him hard. Wanted to fuck him through the mattress. He certainly didn’t complain, just said ‘Don’t bruise’ at some point, and I told him to shut up and fucked him twice as hard. After he came, it took him a long time to come down. He kept shivering.

I’m down to a pair of boxers when I join Keltie in bed. My muscles are aching, my body begging for a bit of rest. The painkillers will kick in soon – I went through Keltie’s bag when she was in the bathroom, found those could-kill-a-horse painkillers that she got for her sprained ankle last fall. She’s always worried that she will injure herself in a way that will ruin her career. She worries about a lot of things.

She presses into my side, her legs brushing mine. She’s small. She’s curved. Her breasts press against me, and god, she’s so oddly shaped.

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” she whispers.

“Of course, baby. Stay as long as you like.”

Need to make that call to Vicky.

She shuffles, and I forgot how she radiates warmth, how soft she is all over. Her legs are smooth, freshly shaven. “How’s the album going?”

“It’s not.”

“I’m sorry.” She sounds sorry, too. “Maybe you need to... get out of the studio. Seems to me like you’re all just driving yourselves insane in there.”

“Maybe,” I agree. She might be right. She often is, almost about everything. I let out a deep breath, my fingers absently moving in her hair. “That might be a good idea. I feel like I need to get out of the city for a while.”

“You’re finally taking me to Paris, then?”

“Smart ass,” I say and gently poke her arm. She giggles, and I add, “The buildings are too... tall. You know? My music can’t flow freely because there’s no room. Everything is deluged by people and noise and –”

“Water.”

“– and water, yeah! Just think about your place, ruined like that. That’s shit, that is. There’s just... too much of everything in this town. And I’m a seasoned musician, you know. If I find it suffocating, just imagine what it’s doing to someone like Patrick,” I reason, extending my anxiety onto our drummer who might not share my feelings at all. He probably doesn’t. Even as I speak, I know my band shares none of my sentiments. I just miss going with the flow instead of analysing every fucking thing, every chord change and time signature – I never had to do that before. But now it’s an endless game of everything meaning something. Every word, every kiss, every touch. It’s a competition of lies versus truths, lovers versus partners, wolves versus hearts.

It’s not that he’s fucking Shane. It’s that he treats me like some toy he can put in the corner when he doesn’t need it, and then take it back out again when he’s bored. That he thinks I can be used like another Shane. And that’s it? That’s _all_?

“I need to get out of this place,” I exhale. “And if the music doesn’t work out, I guess I can always work for Eric.”

Keltie laughs. “Oh, yeah. How many hours have you still got?”

“Six. Thank god. The kids are catching on, you know. I spent half the time signing albums last time, and it’s not like a concert, I can’t just leave, and they take it as an invitation to stay indefinitely, hovering around me. Gives me fucking shivers. They’re like leeches. Followed me for four blocks before I got into a taxi.”

She laughs again, and I feel a smile appearing on my face. I don’t remember the last time I did anything like this with her. She’s wonderful because she’s not playing anyone at all. That’s why I liked her in the first place. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and I never have to second-guess a thing. I know what she’s thinking and feeling, I know what she wants, how she feels about me... She loves me. She says it, but not too often. She doesn’t like wearing it out. She’ll just slide it in to the end of a phone conversation, an ‘I love you’ before the line dies, but not every single time.

I _can_ be loved. The fans, well, they don’t know me, do they? So sometimes I wonder about those closer to me, and Keltie is living proof that it can be done.

It’s good to know because sometimes I wonder.

“I love you,” she whispers, pressing a sleepy smile to my chest.

I wrap the covers tighter around us and finally let myself get some sleep.

* * *

“Bismarck.”

“You mean old Otto?” Jon asks, and I shake my head, trying to conduct this band meeting with style. Out of the studio, just like Keltie said. It was a good idea.

“Not the German guy, I mean the capital of North Dakota.” We’re gathered in the bar closest to the studio, and my bandmates look confused. Shane is by the table with a heavily bearded teddy bear-like man whose name I didn’t care to learn but whose title is the First Assistant Cameraman or something alike. It’s good some of the film crew are present – this affects them too. “My old man’s got a hunting cabin just an hour’s drive from Bismarck. He used to go up there every winter when I was a kid, get some quality killing in. It was a shithole, but when he got hospitalised for good last year, I figured that he’s never gonna see his old log cabin again, and so I had it done up. I haven’t been there, but the contractors took some pictures for me. It’s real nice now. Actually looks pleasant, and I- Well, I think us, the band, should go up to the cabin. Just us, the woods, the nature... There’ll be snow this time of year. We take our guitars. We figure out these songs. If we don’t, fuck ‘em, we’ll write new ones. We’ll take the shitty radio from my kitchen and a handful of tapes, record the rough versions live right there. We stay there until the album is on tape. Then we fly back to New York and record the songs in a three takes max. It’s that simple.”

They look at me like I’m insane, but I don’t think I am. New technology is spoiling us. Not too long ago everyone was stuck with four-tracks, but now we can add dozens and dozens of layers. It’s too much fuss. Let’s strip it down slightly, go back to basics. I know I’ve got a lot of acoustic songs in the works, but I’m not making a folk album. Folk is dead. I’m making a stripped down rock album. And I don’t want to play the same songs dozens of times to make it perfect. Perfection is unattainable, so I’m giving us three takes to get it right. That’s it. That’s all.

“Well,” Gabe says, “vamonos, eh?” He grins. He’s always up for anything. Patrick just nods because it’s not like he gets a say, really. He does as he’s told. It’s Jon that I need to convince, and he looks less than thrilled by my idea.

I say, “The music isn’t working. We stay here, we’ll end up killing each other.”

Jon rubs his chin. “Well... when would we leave? And how long would we be away for?”

“We start getting this ready straight away, so I say... we should be able to leave town in a few weeks. And once there, I don’t know. Two or three weeks.”

Jon looks like spending three weeks away from Cassie is a bit too much. He’s been domesticated. How does he expect to tour come summer if he can’t take three weeks without his better half? Plans to take Cassie on tour, probably.

“If you think that this is something we’ve got to do,” Jon says, voice heavy like the words are unpleasant to utter. “If you think this is necessary, absolutely necessary, then... okay.”

“That’s settled then.” To make it official, I lift my whisky glass and finish it off in one go, making a show of placing it back to the table.

We’re going. Good. Finally. I’ve been in this city for too long. I can feel it in the way people look at me.

“Up until then, gentlemen, we’re free men. Let’s get trashed,” I say, and Gabe instantly goes to the bar and soon returns with their most expensive spirits. All on me, of course. Shane keeps trying to engage me in conversation about what this means for the documentary, but I ignore his worried words. Let him sort it out with Vicky.

I don’t intend to stay in the bar either – let the boys have some down time without the boss. I steal a cigarette from Jon and bid them goodnight. “I hope not to see you soon,” I say, a captain abandoning his ship, but we all need a break from one another. We know that.

“I’ll come out for a smoke with you,” Gabe says, and I lift an eyebrow because he can smoke indoors where the booze and good company is, but I shrug. I leave my band plus director and cameraman person in a pleasant state of tipsiness, feeling like the weight of the world has been lifted off me. I don’t need to go to the studio tomorrow. I can breathe more easily.

Gabe steals my lighter outside the bar, ignites the tip of his Marlboro and then pockets the lighter with no intention of giving it back. “So,” he says, taking in a deep drag. “Heard Keltie’s moved in with you.”

“Temporarily, yeah.”

“Well, that must complicate things a bit, am I right?” A smile flickers on his lips, but I don’t return it. Instead I look over his shoulder like the facade of the building opposite is endlessly intriguing. He continues with, “What with her constantly breathing down your neck now, noting any mysterious absences...”

He wants me to say it. Not sure why my confirming any of his suspicions is so important to him. And if I said that yeah, oh boy, he sure is right, then what would I be agreeing to?

“Aw, come on. I give you all the details,” he pouts. “I mean, _all_ of them, from that girl who had never gotten head to that guy who was hung like a horse. And Brendon. God, _Brendon_.” He lets out a low whistle, which I suppose indicates approval. “That mouth of his, and my god, that _ass_ and those _hips_ , I wouldn’t mind slipping one in myself, let me tell –”

“Gabe. Be careful with what you say next.”

He laughs good-naturedly, not taking me seriously. “Why? Come on, Ryan! I bet he can be so attentive in bed, he seems the type. Bet he’s a good boy.”

He is, Gabe’s spot on, but that doesn’t stop me from suddenly shoving him, my palms flat against his chest. He stumbles backwards a step or two from the sudden blow. His cigarette falls from his lips as he stares at me wide-eyed. I’m as surprised by my actions as he is, and I quickly drop my gaze, ashamed of myself.

He keeps staring at me. “Fuck... Sorry.”

All of my muscles are tense, and it’s not anger that bubbles within me, but frustration. What’s he saying? That I’m lucky to have Brendon? That Brendon looks like he needs a handful of action from several men to be happy? That I’m not enough for him or that that’s all I am for him?

“You just stay away from Brendon, alright?”

Gabe looks awkward. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t. I didn’t get that it... I mean, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful or –”

“It’s just. It’s not a conversation topic.”

“Yeah. Got it.” He looks like he really wants to go back inside now and keep drinking, but he doesn’t want it to look like he’s fleeing the scene. “I don’t look at him like that, anyway,” he laughs.

“Yeah, you do.” Any bisexual or gay guy in the world would look at Brendon like that.

“I’ll stop, then,” he says, as if he now realises that he’s been out of line picturing Brendon with no clothes on, and his tone suggests that my fleeting use of physical force was more aggressive than I realised, that something in my eyes managed to place a seed of actual fear in Gabe.

“He just – Brendon doesn’t need. I mean I’m not with him,” I argue before Gabe thinks that I’m making statements here. There is nothing between us that could be labelled as anything. It’s nothing concrete. It’s constantly shifting, and I don’t want Gabe thinking that I have Brendon if tomorrow Gabe sees Shane canoodling with him and me standing in the corner, head drooping, the idiot who thought he had more than he did. “Think whatever you want,” I amend uneasily, “but don’t say it to my face. He’s a person, not a piece of meat.”

“Sure. Alright. I didn’t realise,” he mumbles, and he’s not referring to Brendon’s sudden existence as a person of substance in addition to his sex on legs appeal, but that he didn’t realise the other half of the deal. The part about me. I don’t want to have that conversation.

“Don’t worry about it. Look, it’s nothing. I’m sorry I pushed you. C’mere, man.” I pull him for a quick one-armed hug, patting his back a few times as he does the same. A quick apology without having to say that I’m sorry. “We alright?” I ask as I pull back.

“Top notch, Ry. Top notch.” He smiles, but he has none of the cockiness in it. He looks at me in a way he has never looked at me before, and he doesn’t seem to know what to make of it, but then the smile slowly reaches his eyes too. He likes being in on the joke.

* * *

A girl is going through the M’s, and the vinyl I put on finished twenty minutes ago, but I can’t be bothered changing it. “Do you have the Menace album?” she asks me after a while. She’s the only customer in the shop.

“I don’t know. Check?” I offer unhelpfully, not bothering looking up from the newspaper I found lying around. None of the current affairs interests me, but I am two hours away from freedom, from my temporary employment being over, which isn’t close enough. That’s two hours of another potential fan invasion if any of the loonies decide to drop by. The newspaper at least stops me from staring at the door like I’m waiting for a gunman to come in blasting. I hope no one wants to buy records on a Wednesday afternoon apart from this one miserable soul, and that the next person who walks through the door is Eric, who’s got a late afternoon shift. He’s coming to release me from this prison. He’ll be my messiah. That’s probably what he wanted.

The girl eventually finds what she’s looking for, and I sell the record to her, freezing halfway of stuffing the cover with Joe Trohman’s face on it into a paper bag. Joe’s cut his hair short and is posing in the centre, equipped with an electric guitar hanging around his rock and roll posed body. He looks fierce in a red one-piece, and someone has finally convinced him to shave his chest hair. That person needs to be thanked.

“Um. Can I have the record?” the girl asks, lifting an eyebrow at me.

I blink. “Yeah. Sure.”

Wherever I go, Joe will be there, haunting me. His album’s been selling well. He gets airplay, interviews, European tours. He gets to be the star with his ‘yeah, yeah, baby’ songs of zero meaning or purpose. That’s menace right there. He probably still thinks I’m a faggot, too. God, he’d die laughing if he knew.

The bell to Eric’s Record Store rings after the girl, and a minute later two guys walk in, and I draw my hat further over my eyes and try to not exist behind the counter. Eric, come save me from this shithole...

I need to stop gambling. I need to not do a lot of things. I need to stop counting days.

Bismarck’s getting sorted out now. Our retreat isn’t as quick as I’d hoped, we’re not going for a few weeks yet, but the tickets were purchased this morning and it’s on. I haven’t been in that cabin since I was thirteen. I don’t even know why I had it renovated – I should’ve just bought myself a new place if I so desperately wanted a cabin of my own.

I haven’t seen Brendon in nearly a week. He’s clearly giving me time, even though it was obvious he couldn’t understand why I needed it. Maybe it’s not even hard for him to do – he gets to spend time with Shane without having to lie about it. I wouldn’t even know if he did decide to call me. I’m not at home. Except for how he wouldn’t call because Keltie conversely is there. He wouldn’t want her picking up. I’m not calling him either, or visiting his club or seeing him at the studio, and it’s so easy to slip into this silence.

I’ve already done this once, but this time it’s not because I have no other options. I could see him if I wanted to. And I want to, but I just can’t see what we’d be doing, me being on page seventeen and him on page nine, and Shane, well, he’s probably on page three or thirteen. I haven’t made my mind up about it yet.

“Put some music on, man,” one of the customers calls out.

“Not your servant,” I call back, and they glare and mutter amongst themselves. They go back to flipping through records. They look at a Canadian History album for a long time and talk about Jon, and then about me a little, too, since rumour has it Jon is in my band now. They don’t realise I’m in the room: a hat and sunglasses. It’s all any refugee would ever need.

The guys keep browsing when the door opens again, that annoying goddamn bell ringing. I take in the new arrival, and then lean into the counter more, flipping onto a new page and focusing on the news. I don’t think I’m ready for this. He stays by the door for a few seconds, looks at me, looks at the guys, before he goes to the 7” section to look at singles. I feel his eyes on me every now and then, and it’s beyond distracting.

“Hey, what’s that song they keep playing on the radio?” the other guy now asks me and starts humming and whistling out of tune. I vaguely make out a half-sensible melody.

“Fleetwood Mac. The F’s.” I point him to the right direction. “It’s on the new album.”

They make me put the record on, even, nodding by the counter as Lindsey starts singing that “loving you isn’t the right thing to do –”, guitar riff, “– how can I ever change things that I feel?” I nervously tap the counter, and he’s by the S’s now, pretending to be damn interested in _Bookends_. “If I could, maybe I’d give you my world –”, more guitar, fucking predictable, “How can I when you won’t take it from meee?”

“That’s enough of his relationship problems,” I decide, but the guys both buy their own copies of the album, one on vinyl and the other on tape, and they grudgingly thank me for what clearly was inadequate customer service in their humble opinions.

The bell rings as they exit the store, and I focus on my newspaper once more.

“Hey.”

I look up to see a forced smile on his face, though he’s trying hard to make it genuine. He looks well. I wanted him to look like shit. Been a week. He’s not alright, I see that instantly, but he’s not as bad as I wanted him to be. He scoffs, and I ask, “What?”

“Wearing sunglasses inside. Very Dylanesque of you.”

“For your information, I’m in danger out here. Fans are nuts. Remember that stalker of Dylan’s that stole his garbage and wrote a book about it?”

“Oh, yeah, I can see how an empty record store is equally dangerous.”

It seems like he’s trying to pick a fight, but at least he came all the way here to do it. He cracked before I did. Okay. That’s already one victory.

I make a show of slowly removing my sunglasses. It’s not like he doesn’t know it’s me. I place them carefully on the counter, already missing my shield. “So where should we go fuck?” I ask.

“Sorry?”

“Well, that’s what you’re here for, right? I mean, we’ve got some sleazy hotels around. My place is off limits now that Keltie’s staying there, so... any bright ideas?”

“I didn’t – That’s not why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

He looks insulted, and his brows knit together. “Okay, what is – I mean. I’ve been... giving you time. Like you wanted. I thought that the recording and the stress were... But then Shane told me that you’re leaving town, and you never told me, so I – I really don’t know what’s going on. With us.”

His voice is uncharacteristically apologetic. His eyes are doleful as he looks at me, all confused innocence like that’s meant to make my heart melt. Because that’s what works on Shane. He thinks I’m him. That we’re similar. That the same party tricks work on both of us.

He stares at me. “Did I _do_ something?”

“No. Yes. I mean no.”

“Okay, I don’t _understand_ what –”

“Yes! Yeah, actually. Yes. Because I thought we had an understanding. I thought you thought more of me than – than whatever you clearly think. And don’t think your sad eyes work on me just because they work on your boyfriend. Because here’s the newsflash, alright? You ready? I’m _not_ Shane. I’m not – not this oblivious fucking guy who can’t see what’s right in front of his eyes! And I’m more than convenient sex. I’m not stupid, and I will know when I’m being lied to –”

“I haven’t lied!” he objects, finally doing something other than trying to be sweet or disgruntled. Brendon is not sweet. He never was. “I don’t – Convenient sex? Have I said that? God, where is this coming from?”

“You have lied. Fuck, just admit it. Or maybe it’s such second nature with you that you don’t even notice! What else can be expected from someone who’s been making up pasts for himself since he was fifteen, huh?”

He grits his teeth like he can’t believe I went there. “You always have to –” he snaps, cutting himself off, hands in fists. Oh, I know just what buttons to push. I know, I know. I’m talented that way. He takes in a calming breath like he refuses to come down to my level. He hasn’t realised it yet: we’re down in the gutter, him and I. We’re not graceful. We’re not beautiful. We’re not even right: we’re lying and sinning and loving it. “Right, so it’s about Shane, is it?” he asks with finality like we’ve finally concluded what the problem is.

“No! God, no. It’s not about _Shane_.” I have to hold back a scoff. “Shane can fuck you every two hours for all I care! Because I don’t. Care, that is.” He doesn’t reply, just looks at me the way he used to back on tour when I snapped at a fan or did something he generally thought was an asshole move on my part. All the others let me get away with it. He never did. But I can sense that somehow his thoughts right now are _fuckshitfuck_ as he Poirots the situation and gets it, but I hope he knows that it’s not Shane or what they did or any of that insignificant crap, but the bigger picture.

“You know you’re not exactly the poster boy of honesty either!” he then barks, and I’ve got nothing. I have been straight with him, and I am clueless as to what he’s on about. He lowers his voice a little. “Why didn’t you tell me your dad’s hospitalised? Huh? I mean, I had to hear it from Shane. Imagine how stupid I felt standing there. All this time, and you never said a word!”

“How is that at _all_ related to _anything_?”

“It is! You always think that everyone’s out to get you! You’re telling me to be honest when you’re not letting me in, and it should be a two-way street, Ryan!”

It should be? _What_ should be? God, can he not just say it?

“Right, because my old man dying in a tiny hospital room is about _you_.”

“That’s not what I’m saying! I’m just – You just have never said a word of it when that must be...” He sighs heavily. “I mean, what’s wrong with him?”

“What isn’t?” I counter. “Fucked up his liver, hasn’t he? No one’s surprised. No one’s calling the press. Don’t go thinking for a second I want to talk about it. I pay the hospital bills. That’s all I know, and that’s all I care to know. Don’t bring this up again, you hear me?”

“Because I take orders from you,” he says sardonically, looking at me like I’m filth. “You know what, Ryan? It’s time to grow the fuck up.” He marches to the door, and there he is, my Brendon. That’s the person that I know. This is what we are, hungry canines tearing each other apart.

“That’s mature, Bren! That’s great! You walk away!” No response. “I’ll send you a postcard from Bismarck, then! Signed by yours truly! Well, that’s fine! That’s just fine!” Everything inside me is spinning fast like a crazy whirlpool. He still doesn’t react. “Have a nice life!”

He stops at the door, and the anger is practically glowing off of him, visible in the tensed muscles of his shoulders. He turns around slowly, fuming. “How about you give me a call when you decide to stop acting like a bitch, alright? And _don’t_!” he adds, like he can sense my ingenious riposte about him being the bitch in this relationship. “Don’t say anything. You just fuck off to Bismarck for a goddamn month! Maybe the fresh air will knock some sense into you.”

“Oh, I need sense to be knocked into me, do I? That’s news. Wow, that’s a refreshing perspective, thanks for the input!”

“Fuck off,” he barks. He swirls around, and I busy myself by murderously shoving Lindsey’s new record back into its sleeve, rounding the counter to take it back to the F’s. The bell doesn’t ring, though – instead Brendon’s steps are now incoming, and I slip the LP somewhere in the C’s, ready for round two. “Why do you have to be such a cunt?” he hisses, and I turn to him with my eyebrows raised, the storm in me now at the point of heavy rain, furious lightning, perhaps a tornado in the works. “You bring out the worst in me, you know that?”

“It’s not hard to do.”

He lifts an accusing finger and points it at me. “I’m not coming back.”

“That’s probably for the best. I’m sure someone can fill my shoes easily enough.”

He looks shocked that his threat had no affect on me. “Fuck, what are you –” He almost pulls his hair, fingers crooked, all anger and confusion. “Maybe we’re in a need-to-know basis here! Did that occur to you?” he snaps. “Lies aren’t – They’re not about taking the piss out of people. Half the time they’re about protecting people! Although for you they’re clearly just about protecting yourself. And if I wanted convenient sex, I would _not_ be coming to you. You’re anything but convenient, so you think about that. You fucking hypocrite.” He makes for the door, and I lean against the raised table behind me, my insides feeling weakened. I don’t know, I just don’t know anymore.

He slows down. He comes to a stop. He’s not moving. He’s standing there, not moving, and I dare a look at his back, the way he’s hanging his head. Everything hurts, and I didn’t want this, don’t know what the hell I wanted or intended.

“You bring out the worst in me too,” I say quietly. Also the best, I think, but I don’t tell him that.

“Yeah, that’s the most beautiful part,” he laughs, sounding sad, and it pierces right through me. He might be wiping his cheeks. I can’t tell for sure, but he wouldn’t be here if it was insignificant to him. I just had to know. “Fuck...” he says so quietly I barely hear it. I’ve made my way over, my hands hovering an inch from his hips, unsure.

He breathes unsteadily. “I’m sorry. That I lied. I didn’t mean to – But you’re impossible, Ryan, you can’t just not say anything and then attack me when I don’t even know why we’re fighting, and –”

I take the decisive step to hug him from behind, and he starts as I wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him to my chest. My nose presses against the shell of his ear, and he relaxes against me, his hands moving down to rest over mine. Nuzzling him a little, I find my voice again. “I’m not very good at this.”

He laughs. “Yeah. Clearly.”

But he doesn’t object. He doesn’t object when I take us from an abstract level, a fleeting thought in my head, to a concrete level instead. He agrees. That it exists.

It’s not just me.

“God, Ryan,” he breathes out, still sounding hurt. I press a soft kiss right behind his ear. Don’t want to talk. I press another, more lingering. His breathing quickens. I’m trying to apologise.

The bead curtain of the backroom rattles when we find our way across the store, and the floor is hard but it doesn’t matter. He says, “I missed you,” voice husky, strained, choked up, and I keep kissing his stomach, our clothes having disappeared fast. He moves like every second is a second too long. Our hands are urgent, our lips hungry, and I keep pressing my fingers hard against his skin, watching the whitened imprints fade when I move on to touch him somewhere else. My knees ache from the press of the floor, our limbs knocking together. The burning need helps us more than the messy saliva, but we get there, our swollen lips pressing together, and he’s never felt this close before. He gasps, his eyes rolling to the back of his head when I’m buried in him all the way.

“God, I missed you,” he mumbles, more to himself than me, but the difference is that this time I believe him.


	4. Mercy

“Would you put some clothes on?”

“Why?” I counter, heading to the fridge. “Does my birthday suit offend you?”

Keltie quirks an eyebrow, her lips twitching up into a smile. “It doesn’t offend me, I’m just saying that being naked in the kitchen is a bit unorthodox.”

“Fuck your system,” I deadpan with a pointed finger, and she laughs, one arm wrapped around her raised knee. She keeps eating her brunch, which is just some cereal and milk, so food-wise it’s not brunch, but time-wise it is. I open my fridge to find some post-shower food, and I take in the shrivelled red pepper, seven beer cans, three wine bottles, the champagne bottle, the half-finished vodka, and you’d think that with Keltie living here there’d be, I don’t know, non-liquid food in the fridge.

“That’s not breakfast,” Keltie tells me when I take a beer.

“Oh, I know. It’s alcohol.”

She looks disapproving when I wink at her, but she laughs like I knew she would. “You’re ridiculous these days.”

It’s a pretty good day to be ridiculous, all things considered. I’m crossing the living room when she calls after me to put some boxers on, for god’s sake, and I oblige a bit grudgingly. Living with her is alright apart from her objecting to my nudity. I mean, we’re both damn busy: I’m going around town to have a final drink with everyone before the band retreats from New York, and she’s got four shows and six practice sessions every week. When she comes home exhausted, I’m just heading out to start my night. I still get to see her a hell of a lot more, and sometimes I stay at home and we talk about our favourite authors until four a.m. as she bakes muffins and I watch her baking muffins, then stick my finger into the dough, smoke cigarettes, tell her tour stories and drink wine.

And this is what it’d be like if we lived together.

I’m paying obscene amounts to get Keltie’s apartment fixed in record time. This won’t last long, our symbiosis. She said something about it being a good test for us. For the future. She probably means marriage, but I ignored her meaningful eyes and focused my energies on changing the subject.

The phone starts ringing in the living room, and I rush out with a dress shirt hanging on me, calling out, “I’ve got it!” when I hear the chair move in the kitchen. I make sure Keltie hasn’t come out as I pick up the phone with a, “Hello?”

“Ryan, it’s Jon.”

Oh. Well, that makes life easier.

I put the phone between my shoulder and ear and start buttoning my shirt. “Hey, man, what’s up?”

Jon starts asking about Bismarck again and what he should pack and what shouldn’t he pack and if I want the twelve-string he’s got since I prefer it to mine. He sounds stressed and confused, and soon says, “You wanna meet up for lunch? We could settle these things while we eat.”

“Oh, uh.” I turn my back towards the kitchen and look out the living room window instead. “I’m having lunch with Keltie today. Sorry. But we’ll reschedule, right? I’ll call you.” I try to get my cuffs buttoned as I listen to him mumbling an unenthusiastic okay.

“Who’s that?” Keltie asks from right behind me, and I start slightly as I swirl around and smile at her. I mouth ‘Jon’ as she grabs my wrists and attends to my cuffs for me.

“Okay, I’ll see you later then,” I say, putting the receiver down, now half-dressed with underwear and a shirt. Pretty good going. I brush my damp hair with both hands and say, “That was Jon. I’m meeting him for lunch.”

Keltie frowns. “But it’s my day off.”

“I know, baby, I know. He’s just freaking out about this Bismarck business.” I walk to the bedroom to get the rest of my clothes on, and Keltie follows in her pyjama shorts and baggy t-shirt. She crosses her arms and gives me this look, and I put a tie on, trying to decipher the signals she’s clearly trying to send. “What?” I ask.

She shifts in place restlessly. “We just never spend any time together.”

“What are we doing right now?”

“Ryan. That’s not what I mean.” She sighs dramatically. “You’re leaving town next week, and I thought with me staying with you, we’d hang out more. Go to dinner or to the movies or just go out, but we don’t.” Her cheeks redden slightly, and I guess what she’s about to say a second before she says it. “We haven’t had sex since –”

“Hey. These fingers.” I show my right hand and point at the long digits with my left hand. She got off quickly – clearly had some tension she needed to get rid of. And that was last night. Okay, two nights ago. Maybe three. Still. “I’m just busy. That’s all.” I grab my pants and pull them on, sliding a belt through the loops, and she nods like I’m right, clearly I’m right. It’s not like I suddenly don’t find her attractive. I just wear myself out fucking someone else. She doesn’t know that, though, and she’s beginning to wonder. I really need to fuck her before I leave for Bismarck. Maybe I could get Vicky to remind me.

“I’m gonna be late,” I tell her, grab my suit jacket and peck her cheek. She’s got the tired and sad look of a war widow. “I’ll try to make it quick, alright?”

“Okay,” she says, smiling at me with warm eyes.

I have every intention to take my time.

* * *

He’s already standing in the corner of 7th Avenue and West 23rd Street, smoking a cigarette and looking at the traffic lights that hang over the street in their yellow boxes. He’s wearing a leather jacket that I’ve seen Shane wear sometimes. It looks amazing on Brendon. He doesn’t see me on the other side of the street as he seems focused on smoking, like he’s taking pleasure in every delicious drag, every swirl of smoke. I’m in no hurry so I remain next to the New Yorkers who are waiting for the lights to change, and I watch him and his black bell jeans and the red, woollen scarf that I’ve seen so often and the way his hair is sticking out a bit on the left side and the way his lush lips attach themselves to the cigarette.

The lights change, the cars slow down. He looks around. He looks across. I use one finger to beckon him over. Here, boy. Right here.

He smiles to himself and joins the flow of people crossing 23rd Street, and I meet him by the blue post box on my side.

“You’re late,” he tells me.

“I’m right on time,” I argue and nod down the street. He falls into step with me, casting a suspicious look my way. I grin. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Never,” he says, and I laugh. “So where are we going?”

“Not far at all,” I say, the building already right ahead of us, the sign sticking out of the building, the letters vertical. I come to a stop under it, and he looks around, still clearly clueless. “We’re here,” I say and nod at the red-bricked building.

He leans backwards as he looks up to examine the facade. “Wait. You brought me to a hotel?” he asks disbelievingly. “The Chelsea Hotel? When you said you wanted to show me something, I was expecting more than your dick.”

“You’re a dick,” I argue and lead the way inside to the spacious reception. His steps are hesitant, but he follows, drawing in on himself like he wants to hide.

They greet me at the reception with “Good afternoon, Mr. Ross,” and I nod back. They don’t take a second look at Brendon, and Brendon follows me aimlessly, looking around at the huge paintings on the yellow walls. We wait for the elevator to come down, and I need to remind myself that there’s nothing suspicious about this. If there’s something I’ve come to realise over the past few years, it’s that people can’t take one look at you and know your preferences.

Okay, taking that back. With some people you can. Take that William Beckett for instance. I could sense it off him long before I knew it for a fact.

But the rest of us who aren’t as obvious as William can remain in the dark. I’ve fucked men I never would have guessed were gay. They didn’t look it or act like it or talk like it. There are no universal signs, and while Brendon can definitely act gay if he wants to, he seems to have grown past the era of wearing too short t-shirts and cocking his hips and showing off his incredible body. Now he just looks like a fucking handsome man. Nothing indicates that he’s gay, so the two of us now stepping into the elevator together isn’t suspicious to the outsiders. We could be friends or business partners or bandmates or cousins or brothers or pretty much anything in this world. It’s not suspicious if we don’t act like it is.

“Are we meeting someone?” he asks, looking above the elevator door where the floor numbers are lighting up as we get to each one.

“No,” I say dismissively, and eventually the doors open to the seventh floor. “Come on.” I nudge him with my elbow gently, now going through my pockets. The corridor floor is covered by a burgundy carpet, and our footsteps are barely audible as we approach the right door. I get out the bulky key ring that has the number engraved on it. “Honey,” I say, unlocking the door, “we’re home.” I give the door a push.

Brendon looks beyond suspicious, but he steps into the living room, anyway. I like the suite almost more than my own apartment: everything is soft somehow, the wooden floor covered in red-shaded rugs, the big armchairs and couch looking inviting around the simple glass coffee table, the fireplace setting the mood despite the fact that it’s been closed up, and above the mantel is a large, gold-framed mirror. It’s trying to copy a French mansion we’ve never seen and never will with a handful of New York in the more modern designs. We’ve got a nice view, the yellow curtains framing the windows that show the tops of shorter buildings, and behind them more buildings, New York reaching out to all directions from where we are. Brendon stands in the middle of it all, turning to me with questioning eyes as I close the door, but not before I slip the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the other side.

“What is this place?”

“One of their suites,” I tell him, walking to the bedroom door and pushing it open so that he can see the second room. The king-sized bed takes up most of the space that’s decorated in reds, and a single stemmed rose lies on the pillows. I didn’t leave it there, didn’t ask for one to be put there, but it’s a nice add-on, I think. They like having me here. Of course they do – one more musician to add to their long list.

“Okay, so you got us... a suite for the afternoon.” He nods slowly like he can deal with that, still looking around the living room awkwardly.

“I got it for us indefinitely.” I find what I’m looking for in my breast pocket and throw him the key. He catches it. “That’s the second key. For you. We can come and go as we please.”

His eyes are fixed on me. “What do you mean indefinitely?”

I smirk. “You wanted to keep fucking on floors, did you?” I unbutton my jacket and throw it on one of the armchairs. “You want a drink?” I ask as I go to the drinking cabinet. I pour us glasses of Scotch without waiting for an answer.

“Ryan. You –” He seems to be struggling to find the words, but then he just laughs. “My god. I can’t believe you.” He doesn’t sound mad. Of course he isn’t, now that we’ve got it figured out. Now that we’re finally in tune with what’s happening between us. I didn’t tell Gabe about any of it, of course not, but maybe he sensed something as he started babbling on about first fights as milestones in relationships, although I still don’t understand how that relates to anything.

The Chelsea Hotel is a good place for us. Firstly, with all the famous people they’ve had living here, the staff has learned to be discrete. And I’m not stupid either: officially the room – our room – is occupied and paid for by my blind company, Flagstaff Industries. Vicky’s lawyers set the company up, and it’s Flagstaff that owns my SoHo apartment, the cabin in Bismarck, eliminating my names from all the legal paperwork. That way fans can’t track me down. Of course the staff at the hotel knows I’m here, but my name isn’t on anything. And this room is ours for as long as we want it.

I hand him his drink, and he takes it to his lips. “You hungry?” I ask, nodding towards the phone on the side table. “Room service. You want pizza or strawberries or... I don’t know, whipped cream...”

“Whipped cream, huh?” he asks with a knowing smirk, and I match his sly grin. An excited buzz has settled in my guts, and it’s to do with this place. The suite is practically half of an apartment or a house: a bathroom, a living room and a bedroom. And it’s ours.

Brendon throws his jacket on top of mine and goes over to sit down by the armchair by the window, looking out as he takes a sip of his drink. It’s like he’s feeling out the room. He slowly undoes the scarf around his neck, and I sit by the couch opposite the fireplace and watch him. Sirens sound from the world that somehow feels incredibly distant. His fingers curl around the glass, the golden liquid tilting towards him when he takes a sip. He looks at peace with the world, a small disbelieving smile on his lips. You don’t get views like this in Brooklyn. I have never seen where he lives, but it’s nothing like this, and we both know it.

“You don’t have to do this,” he then says and looks back at me. “It’s a waste of money.”

“I’ve got money to waste, and we’ve got nowhere else to go. Besides, you fucking love that view.”

He laughs and smiles wide like he’s been caught, but he looks like he belongs in this room and the world of champagne breakfasts, and if I can give him that, then I will. I gladly will.

He gets up reluctantly, like he’s afraid the view will vanish if he doesn’t keep an eye on it. “You don’t have to spoil me.” He sits on his knees on the couch next to me, staring at me. I cup the side of his face, my thumb brushing over his cheekbone. He doesn’t realise how insignificant the room is when compared to what I’ll get in return.

“I’m not trying to. I’m just... being practical. Now, if you want to get into spoiling, then I’ve also got your birthday present ready.”

“No. No, I don’t want anything,” he instantly says. I open my mouth, but he takes my hand from his cheek, presses a kiss to my knuckles and says, “Thank you. But no.”

“You don’t even know what it is!”

“And I’d rather not,” he says. “Besides, my birthday’s a month away, and I’m gonna be _old_ , and I don’t want to think about it.”

“You’re not gonna be old,” I object, but he makes a sad face like he is. “You’re gonna be twenty-six.”

He grimaces. “You had to say it, didn’t you? God. I mean, right now I’m bang on in the middle of my twenties. In a month’s time, I’m leaning closer to thirty. And then I’ll be _more_ than a quarter of a century old, and then I’m gonna have this big crisis, like what am I going to do with my life? What is it all for? What does it mean? Will I ever accomplish anything?” His voice has turned into a melodramatic boom, and I put my glass down on the coffee table.

“Well, about that...” I start as he moves to sit on the couch properly, leaning into it and exaggerating a life-crisis sigh.

“At least Shane will always be older than me,” he then says like it’s slightly comforting him in his anguish.

I quirk an eyebrow. “How old is he?”

“Thirty-two. Will be thirty-three in December.”

“Bullshit.” He doesn’t look thirty-two. That _is_ old, never mind that I’ll be twenty-seven this year. I’m seven months older than Brendon, not seven _years_. And Keltie, well, she’s only a few years older than me, but I feel the difference with her. She’s at that age where she wants to marry me. She wants me to consider us living together. She wants children. I can barely keep myself alive, let alone a helpless baby. But say two years, that’s over seven hundred days of more life. Seven years, that’s... Well, whatever the exact number may be, but that’s two thousand days, well over. Shane has seen over two thousand more days than Brendon has, and that has got to put them in different places. If Keltie wants to settle down, so does Shane. Shane probably had it in mind when he met Brendon, thought ‘Here he is. The guy I’ll grow old with’. Keltie probably had the exact same thought about me.

And that’s why Brendon and I are hiding in a room in the Chelsea Hotel. Because we’re not like them, we’re not... their kind. When I first met Brendon, I just wondered if he could lift a fucking amp and get his job done, hoping I’d make it through the day without a mental breakdown.

“What did you think of me when you first met me?” I now ask, not sure if I want to know the truth.

“ _Well_ ,” he says, finishing his Scotch. I lean into the couch with him. “I thought you were a conceited yet self-deprecating asshole, who also had really pretty eyes.” He now turns to look at me, like he wants to see the eyes that he’s talking about. “I thought you... didn’t appreciate what you had. I thought you were disillusioned by your fame. I thought you had these amazing lips and I liked your smile, and I thought that no, Brendon, you cannot go around liking this man’s smile, and _then_ I just – Sometimes. Sometimes when you looked at me, it was like you saw everything.” His voice fades out, and he smiles a little. “Yeah. Just like the way you’re looking at me now.”

He’s not right. I can’t see it all, but I’d want to. I’d really want to.

“And what do you think of me now?” My voice is quiet.

“Well, now...” He swallows hard. The atmosphere’s turned serious in a way it never is with us. He leans in slightly. “Now I think you’re a disillusioned rock star, who’s conceited and self-deprecating, and also an amazing lay.”

“Fuck off,” I bite and shove him half-heartedly, and he laughs, and it’s like the sound fills the room, making it ours. “I don’t think I want to give you your birthday present anymore.”

“Good. I don’t want it.”

“It was an _amazing_ present...”

“Sure it was.”

“The best present I’ve ever given anyone.”

“I can only imagine,” he muses, and since he’s not about to crack, I do.

“Time.” He looks confused, and I sit up properly. “I would’ve given you time. Two or three days. Studio time, I mean. I talked to Bob, and he could stick around for it, and you and Ian could go to the studio while we’re in Bismarck and do that demo you wanted to do. In a proper studio.”

“With Bob Johnston producing?” he laughs incredulously, but I only nod. Brendon’s met Bob, so why’s that a surprise? “Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel and who knows who else Bob Johnston? Working on my _demo_? In a brand new studio?”

“Told you it would’ve been good,” I say nonchalantly as the light in his eyes sparks up, his pupils widening as he pales. He’s proud and stubborn, I know that, and he turned down my offer to call a few friends, get him some free studio time somewhere. I just have to make him an offer he can’t refuse. He’s not stupid. _No one_ is that proud. “But I know, I know.” I sigh dramatically. “You’re not accepting my gift.”

“No, I –”

“Say no more! Really! I know I stepped out of line and –”

“Ryan!”

“ – you’re a lone wolf, roaming the wilderness of this world alone, not accepting help from me or your primeval boyfriend, and I should know that by now and –”

He cuts me off with starving kisses, our lips bruising together as his hands rest on the sides of my neck, holding me in place. “I’ll take it,” he says. “Fuck, I’ll take it, you stupid –”

Stupid what, I never find out, but he starts laughing against my lips, swearing heavily in disbelief.

And he sounds happy.

* * *

Vicky knows. I know that she knows and she probably knows that I know that she knows, but she probably doesn’t fully know what she knows.

Our relationship comes down to Vicky not asking awkward questions but still making sure that I don’t get in trouble. If I want something done, she makes sure that it happens, and she’s taken Keltie’s apartment’s renovation to heart, making sure the contractors do a good job with half the time it’d normally take. She’s organised the Bismarck trip, booked the flights, rented cars, and she looks anguished over the thought of losing touch with me for a few weeks, like she thinks I’ll disappear during that time. It’s not completely irrational for her to fear so.

But because she’s perfect at what she does, she immediately makes the call when I tell her that Brendon Urie is to have control of the studio to do as he pleases in my absence. Bob’s already agreed to it, but I want to keep it quiet. If the guys hear about it, if Shane hears about it, there will be questions. Why am I helping out a guy that, as far as they know, is a random acquaintance?

It’s what Vicky is thinking right now as we’re in her office. She’s hired a second in command person to deal with The Whiskeys on the side, and she’s got a personal assistant and a secretary and a few other people, and it’s a company in its own right, and I walk in and get the doors opened for me, and then I’m opposite Vicky, who now knows. She always wanted to know.

“I saw Brendon play at an open mic night,” I explain. “He’s talented. I want to see what happens.”

“I’m sure he’s a creative individual,” she says agreeingly, but that’s not what she’s really saying. She’s saying, ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ She’s saying, ‘Don’t tell me it’s what I think it is.’ Pete didn’t care back in the day. He didn’t care who I fucked as long as I was going on stage every night. Vicky isn’t like that. She wants what she thinks is best for me. “You’ve been spending time with Brendon, then?” she says, a neutral approach if there ever was one.

I look to her door to make sure it’s closed, and then I shift in my chair uncomfortably. “I’d prefer it if you just did as I asked.”

“I will. Of course I will. It’s just – studio time is expensive. He could even fit thirty studio hours into three days, and I just. I just want to make sure that... you don’t feel pressured into...” She’s trying to find the words, and I don’t understand where she’s going with this. “I mean that... um...” She looks perplexed.

I burst out laughing. “You think I’m being blackmailed?”

“I didn’t say that! I’m just – just thinking. Because remember how back in... December. There was this artwork you wanted me to pick up from Shane’s exhibition.” She’s tapping a pencil against a notepad, her shoulders tense. “I had it picked up and brought here. You’re not one to buy paintings or anything of the sort, so I took a look at it, I admit that. I was curious. I almost forgot about the whole thing, but then a few weeks ago Shane came to the studio with his crew. And then the boy from the picture was there. Brendon. So if there is some... some incriminating evidence that’s lying about, or...”

“Vicky. I adore you. You know that I do, so I mean no disrespect when I say that you’ve lost it.” I lean back in my chair, pressing my fingertips together in my lap. “I have been spending time with him, you’re right. And I want to keep spending time with him.”

She hangs her head slightly, her lips a thin line. “You know we need to talk about this.”

She’s my manager. I know we need to talk about it. Be it Brendon or my bisexuality or whatever she now sees as a threat. Nothing’s changed over the past few years: any sexual deviation from my part will damage my career. Sure, some artists flaunt it. A few years back it was fashionable, even, because saying you fucked both sexes was a statement against the old ways and old ideals and old people. You fucked as a form of protest. Well, that age has passed. You’re no longer a rebel, you’re just a fag. And some musicians didn’t mind connecting their sexuality to their music because their music _was_ a form of sexual expression. They showed it on stage and in the lyrics and on the LP covers, sex, sex, sex, with anyone, any hole, because they were new and outrageous and breaking rules. They wanted to make parents cry. I could no longer do this, but not just because that era has passed. I couldn’t do it because my music isn’t sexual. It’s not about me panting into the microphone about the filthy things I want to do. The Followers wasn’t about that, and my new music isn’t about that. Being honest about my sexuality wouldn’t boost my sales. No, it’d make sure no one bought my records again because who wants to know what serious message about life some cocksucker has? That’s why I keep it private. That’s why it has to remain a secret. But if I were smart, it’d be more private than it is. I’m telling my manager to give my lover special treatment. I’m pushing boundaries. It makes Vicky nervous.

“Isn’t he dating Shane?” she then asks, voice uncertain like she’s not entirely sure what’s going on there.

“Yes, Vicky. Brendon is dating Shane.”

She pales further but just nods. “Alright then.” Another second, and she laughs. “God, it all makes sense now.” She buries her face in her hands, the laughter muffled, and brown hair falls in front of her face like a silky curtain. “Fuck, Ryan, you could warn a girl.” Her voice actually wavers on the last syllable. “We need to talk about this. We need to have a meeting and _talk_ about this, and –”

“Hey,” I stop her. “You’re freaking out.” She nods excessively like she knows, and it’s like she’s taking this personal for some reason.

“Who knows?”

“No one.” She stares me down, and I clear my throat. “Well, Gabe kind of knows.”

“Fuck _me_.”

“Look, Gabe might be unpredictable, but he’s loyal, okay? Loyal to me. Don’t worry about him.”

“It’s my job to worry. Christ,” she sighs, looking torn. I have never seen her like this – she’s always in complete control, even that time that Gabe smacked her ass and she swirled around and slapped Gabe so hard that Gabe almost fell down. But we’re a team. Vicky likes talking about that, using all kinds of war and army metaphors of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and how we can do anything as long as we work together. And I need her on this. Because I could keep Brendon confined in this small nook of my life, but I want more than that. I want him on tour. I want him in my bed. I want him drinking Scotch in hotel room armchairs, admiring the city skyline, and at some point it will take more than booking a room at the Chelsea Hotel to get that done. And that’s why I need Vicky. That’s why I’m including her.

My secrets need more room.

“Okay. So you and Brendon, and – and Gabe knows. Knew before I did,” she adds bitterly. “But I’m okay with this. Just great...” She appears to have calmed down, and she pushes her hair back. She worries on her bottom lip and won’t quite look me in the eye. “But I need to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest.”

“Go on.”

“Is it... a fleeting thing? Or is this a long-term thing?”

I think of Keltie and her hints of us moving in together, and I think of Brendon and Shane’s anniversary, and then I think of him and me, and we never talk about the future, and we never talk about the past, and we fight like cats and dogs for no apparent reason, and he drives me insane, and he tells me I’m impossible, and we lie and we cheat and we fuck and we laugh.

I think of our hotel room, and how him being there for two hours made it feel more like home than any place I’ve ever been.

“It’s a long-term thing,” I tell Vicky.

“And we can trust him?”

“All the way.”

“Well, then. Okay.” She takes in a calming breath and opens her calendar. “Okay,” she repeats. She scribbles something down. “Brendon will get the studio. We’ll make sure to keep it under the radar, but I’ll make sure he gets complimentary snacks and all of it. I’ll take care of it, Ryan.”

I stand up and take her hand. “Thank you,” I say before leaning down and chivalrously kissing the back of her hand. She laughs and pulls her hand back. Her eyes sparkle, but she still looks like I’ve turned her world upside down. “Did we have any more business to cover?” I ask, and she shakes her head. “Well, in that case I’ll be off. I need to pack for Bismarck.”

“I’ll come pick you up in the limo to take you to the airport.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“No, you won’t.”

I glare at her. “I’ll try, Mom.”

“Thank you, son,” she smiles, and I flip her off, making her grin. I decide to send her some flowers once I get home. She needs to know that I appreciate her, and I also need to emotionally blackmail her onto our side. We can’t make an enemy out of her.

I’m at the door when she says, “Oh! There was one thing.”

“Yeah?”

She studies her notes and then looks up. She points a finger at me. “Remember to have sex with your girlfriend.”

“Oh, yeah! Thanks.”

“Just doing my job,” she says, even if her smile is slightly broken. “And you know this conversation isn’t over.”

I know that. I know.

* * *

The sheets persistently cling onto my slickened skin, but we slowly push them out of the way. My mouth feels worn out and sore, but I can’t stop kissing him. All that exists right now is this hotel, this room, this bed. His imminent duties for the promotion company don’t exist, and my trip to half across the country tomorrow morning doesn’t exist. We ignore the hot death on our heels, but we don’t forget it either.

“That was amazing,” he groans again. My hands are in his damp hair, and I taste the sweat that has pooled on his upper lip. He’s right. That _was_ amazing. That just might have been the best we’ve ever had. I should go away more often if it equals sex marathons like this, but mostly I think Bismarck was a stupid idea. I can’t say that to anyone anymore, not when I was the one who pushed it, but I wasn’t in a good place when I made the decision. My fingers slide on his smooth, warm skin, and I have no idea how I’ll be able to stand not being with him. I can’t bring myself to say it. I’ll be damned if I say it.

We’re still coming down, but we’re not rolling over for forty winks. Instead we’re tangling together further, making out like teenagers, every touch electric. His mouth slides over mine, wet and hot, and he breathes out, “Want you.”

Still. Even now.

“Fuck,” I breathe out because it’s so much, and it’s not enough.

He doesn’t know that Vicky knows, and I have no plans to tell him. He’d start worrying about it when I’ve got it all under control now. All under control except this – us on our sides, our hands slowly exploring. We keep tracing each other’s features like we’re not quite convinced it’s real. His mouth moves to my neck where he bites down, and I let my head roll back, eyelids slipping shut. Our hips grind together, and all I know is his skin, his skin, his skin... Every time he speaks, every time he comes into the room, my eyes trace the way he moves. He’s got me right where he wants me, but I hope he hasn’t figured that out yet. His hand presses against my chest, his fingers digging in, and his teeth sink into my neck.

“Bren, I’ve still got a date tonight,” I say half-coherently, knowing that Keltie will notice a huge bruise on my neck if he leaves one there. That’s why I always fuck her in the dark these days, in the dark and under the covers. Not out in the open like this, like our bed’s a stage for the hotel bedroom to see.

“I know, I know,” he says, breathing hard as he licks over where he just bit me. He sounds mournful, but mostly his voice is overtaken by lust. It sends shivers all over my body. His mouth moves to my collarbone, and I let myself fall into it, to the way he’s trying to devour me. His hand slips down my side, shamelessly moving to my ass where he cups me, pulling me closer. Our cocks brush together, and we’re not hard but we’re not soft either. It feels good, being this close. “I had this dream about you,” he says, his mouth now over my ear. He sucks on my earlobe, and I can’t think through the haze of him and his touch. “A vivid dream. Woke up so hard.”

I picture him waking up, hot and bothered, cock throbbing, my name on his lips. I tilt my head to find his lips. “What’d we do?” I ask, moving to lie on my back. He moves with me, his chest pressed to mine, our hips still moving for friction. The kisses are fiery and shameless. A veil of pleasure drapes over us, painting the world in blood red, though really that’s just the bedroom curtains and the sheets, and I should know that but somehow I don’t. My hand moves on his slick back, my nails dragging his skin. I feel each vertebrae moving, and I get even more lost in his touch.

“Fuck, you were,” he says, both hands in my hair. Whatever it was, it’s got him wild.

“Yeah?”

“You were on your back like this, and I was in you.” His hand slips between my legs. I freeze. My guts tighten, and my throat seems to close off. “You felt so good...” His voice is husky, and his erection presses against my thigh. I feel hot all over. I’ve thought about it. It has crossed my mind, but we’re not going there again. He lifts his head, staring down at me with blown pupils. I don’t know what he sees in my eyes, but he’s quick to smile soothingly. “It was just a dream. I’m not saying that –”

“I know,” I say, our lips meeting again. His finger moves up my perineum, not going further although it felt like he was going to, but now his finger moves over my balls and away from their brief exploration.

“I could ride you,” he says. “We could... Although it’d be- God, you know it’d be so hot if you let me.”

Something echoes in my head, a nearly identical memory. Him doing this exact same thing, coming on strong when he knows I’m vulnerable. The memories are all blurred. I remember his lips on the nape of my neck. Not being able to see him, but feeling him in me, feeling full. I remember the pain, the pleasure, and the way he kept pushing into me. It was impossible to catch my breath as my body trembled. I was so fucking sore afterwards. Had to walk down the street, knowing, feeling that I had gotten fucked. That I had let someone do that to me. Whenever I’ve allowed the memory to cross my mind, I’ve been on my own, close to orgasm, my thoughts jumbled and my cock in fist, and then when I was coming down, I told myself that that’s _not_ what I had been thinking about.

Pretending was a lot easier when he wasn’t lying naked on top of me, his weight pinning me down. It’s not something I should want. It’s not something I should let him do to me again.

My lips brush against his Adam’s apple, tasting the skin. I focus on not shaking. “Okay.” Okay. Okay? God, I’m digging my own grave, but we can be quick about it, and I can forget afterwards, only remember it when I jerk off, need new memories of him inside me, fresher ones –

“Fuck,” he groans, the single word coming deep from his chest, masculine and hot. He kisses me passionately, controlling the kiss like he’s got it from here. He doesn’t even double check or clarify that we’re talking about the same thing. He just moves to lie between my legs that part to accommodate him.

“Missed doing this,” he says, and my stomach churns. The sex itself from that night is a blur, but I remember the aftermath, cleaning myself off, standing in the shower with his come rolling down the backs of my thighs, just standing there, my back against the tiles because my legs were so weak, feeling like he’d marked me. The way he cut in a lot deeper than I had given him permission to, and then it all went wrong, all of it, and I never saw him again until I did. And now he wants back in. He doesn’t know what he’s asking.

He moves downwards, wet kisses on my chest. He traces my nipples with his tongue, waiting for them to erect, and then sucking on them when they do. I’ve never really considered them to be an erogenous zone, but they are. They are when he puts his mind to it. His hands have taken a firm hold of my waist, commanding, and I lie still and try to breathe. My skin feels sensitive wherever he touches it, and his lips leave a trail of tingling sensations that make my cock hard like we haven’t fucked in weeks.

“You should hurry up before I change my mind,” I rasp, licking my lips.

He stops and looks up at me, his eyes dark. “Did I say that you could speak?”

There’s a moment, a lull, almost, when the nerves and the horror and the want – the deep, liquid want – all meet, and his words hit home in a way they haven’t, in a way they wouldn’t otherwise, and a chill runs up my spine. “No.”

“No. Exactly.”

He doesn’t make me apologise. He has mercy.

His fingers seem to shake, but he takes a firmer hold, but this is getting to him too, it must be. He just hides it well.

He resumes his journey down, his mouth moving over my ribs to my stomach, teeth scraping the skin. I feel him smile there – wicked, cruel, accomplished – while my heart races and blood pounds in my ears, and every cell of my body is tuned differently now, hyper-sensitive. His tongue twirls in my belly button, causing me to gasp, and when his sinful mouth reaches my hipbones, he says, “God, you’re so skinny.” The bones are jutting out, I know that, and it must turn him on if the attention he gives my hipbones is anything to go by.

He places a wet kiss to the head of my cock without warning, tongue swirling as he holds the base, and I muffle a groan as I jerk violently. He pulls back, and a strand of saliva stretches between his lower lip and my cock, or maybe it’s pre-come, I can’t be sure, but he groans, leans back in and laps at my slit. I bite on my tongue – god, fuck, god, it’s good – but he told me not to speak.

Before it can develop into a proper blowjob, his mouth runs down my length, his tongue licking over my balls as he pushes my legs apart. A small protest erupts in my brain, a sharp _no, don’t_ , but his hands are firm, fingers pressing into the soft skin of my inner thighs, and I want to open up to him. Let him do as he pleases.

“Okay. Okay, Christ,” I mumble quietly, trying to calm down. I place one hand over my eyes like then I don’t have to see or know, and the beige ceiling disappears from view. I bite on my lower lip until it hurts. And his mouth, his stupid fucking mouth, is there, kissing just below my balls where the skin is so sensitive, like he knows exactly what to do. How to drive me insane. He pushes my legs up, bending them over my stomach, and I let him.

Gabe’s words echo in my head – bet Brendon can be a good boy. Yeah, he can. He loves just that, but it’s clear that once in a long while he wants to swap places. What Gabe didn’t know and what I’d never own up to is me being able to get off on Brendon deciding to be a bad boy instead.

His hands take firm holds of my ass cheeks, and he spreads them apart. It’s the most exposing thing I’ve ever felt in my life. His hot breath washes over the skin, and then his mouth makes contact. I jerk and hiss and fight back a slutty moan. His tongue slowly moves over my hole in broad licks, and he groans. His fingers press hard into my flesh. This isn’t new. This I’ve made some guys do for me – I’ve braced myself against walls, jerking off, letting them eat me out, but no fingers, just their tongue, I made that damn clear, my body thrumming with a talented mouth on me, calling them the most derogative terms to make sure that they knew something was wrong with them, not me, not even if I was the one making them do it. That was that. This is this, and this is different, because he’s not some anonymous guy, and he’s going to do a lot more to me than this, and he knows I want it. Lust is pooling in my guts, my cock throbbing.

He pulls back for air, the puffs hitting the wet skin and making my back arch, my spine curving on its own accord.

“Someone’s enjoying themselves,” he notes, a smug tone to his words, and my face feels hot. I do enjoy this. I do, I do, so what?

So nothing, it seems, as he moves to bite down on my cheek, like he wants to leave a mark on my ass instead of my neck. Knowing him, he probably does. He sucks in skin, and that’s gonna leave a mark, that’s going to be a reminder, and his thumb presses against my hole and rubs in the saliva that he left there. My muscles contract, but he keeps rubbing gently, not trying to force anything. I relax into it, waves of heat running over me when he touches me there.

He pulls back and blows air on the piece of skin he just attacked, and it feels sore but he licks over it soothingly, travelling back to take over teasing my entrance instead. His lips rub against me, and he’s kissing me there, slow and deliberate and full of want. I squeeze my eyes shut tight, tight, tight, and it makes it even easier to concentrate on his mouth on me, makes the sounds I’m making louder to my own ears: the gasps, the hushed moans, the erratic breathing. And he hears all of it.

“God, you’re so hot like this,” he says, and I let out the dirtiest moan when he kisses my hole. Then his tongue stiffens, and he pushes into me.

“Bren, you fucking cunt,” I hiss involuntarily, biting my hand and making sure to keep my eyes closed. My other hand is in my hair, pulling on my hair painfully. My body reacts to the intrusion, muscles contracting, my stomach feeling wet where the head of my cock rests, and it’s good, it feels so fucking _good_. His fingers dig into my cheeks, a clear ‘be quiet’ as he keeps going, but I can’t keep quiet, my hand falling from my mouth, and I can’t stop moaning and gasping as he begins fucking me with his tongue. He eats me out with perfect precision, and I can’t stay in control of myself. It’s hard to keep a grip on reality, and the ceiling, fuck, the ceiling is beige and the curtains are red, and my body doesn’t even feel like my body because I’m not familiar with this, I’m not used to this, and it’s wrecking me.

He pulls back momentarily, long enough for me to miss his mouth, but then it’s back. His tongue is back with a finger that he’s pushed into me, and my muscles grip on the single digit. It feels like penetration, proper penetration, and something about it feels so overwhelmingly satisfying that I’m ashamed of the pleasured groan I let out. Fingering myself is never the same, never as good, and it’s not something I have ever done frequently, not enough to get used to the sensation. He’s sliding the finger in and out, and I tell myself to relax.

“That’s right, just let go,” he says. “That’s a good boy...”

My cock gets even harder, like getting compliments means that much, like his words turn me on. But god, it feels good, too good, and I’m on my best behaviour for him to get more. My armour’s in the corner, my back’s arched in surrender, and he knows it.

He’s soon got two fingers in me. The stretch burns, but then he crooks his fingers just right, and my mouth goes slack, and fuck, fuck, _shit_. “Oh god,” I breathe helplessly, panting, trying to get oxygen in, but the air feels fiery and smells musky, and he licks around his fingers. The pleasure all comes from where he has breached me, making me unable to think. He keeps his fingers fucking me until I’m used to it, almost trembling as his fingers repeatedly press against my prostate.

Then his fingers have gone, and my muscles squeeze around nothing. I feel open and desperate, barely registering him pulling my legs apart. When I take in our surroundings, the room is draped in a red glow. He’s sitting on his knees, and my feet have settled on the bed. He’s not looking at me because he’s pulling at the sheets, and he’s flushed, his chest, his neck, and his lips look swollen and red, and his erection is curved upwards. God, I’ve made him so hard. He pushes hair from his forehead when he grabs the lube from somewhere in the sheets, and he pours the remains of the tube onto his palm. Then he looks at me. _Then_ he stares me down. His eyes move from my face down to my chest and stomach, and I know what he sees: my flushed cock, my balls, and then my hole that he’s stretched, wet with his spit, just waiting, and my heart beats so fast that it’s like it wants to break away from my chest. What am I doing, what the hell am I –

“You look good,” he says quietly. I close my eyes, not wanting to know. “You really do.”

I nod quickly, not wanting him to look at me for too long, for him to memorise me like this. His lube-wet fingers push back into me, then, and I groan and spread my legs further to get more because god, that’s so good. I’m lost. I’m so lost. His free hand takes a hold of the base of my cock, and he takes me into his mouth. I groan and take a hold of his hair because it helps, and all I can focus on is where his mouth is, where his fingers are, the way my body is tensing up from the pleasure of it. Sweat rolls down my neck, and there are hinges that hold a person together, holding me together, that are becoming unhinged. He’s finger-fucking me and blowing me, and he’s got me right where he wants me. He groans, taking more of my cock into his mouth, loving it.

“You’re gonna make me come,” I inform him helplessly, because every time his fingers push into me, a surge of pleasure flashes throughout my body and then flies back to the pit of my stomach. It’s good, I don’t want it to stop, but he won’t want me to come yet, I know that much. I try to focus on it. Try to. “Brendon.” He told me not to speak. My hips are moving slightly, trying to get more of his fingers, trying to get more of his mouth. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I breathe out, the pleasure overpowering me and winning the battle. “Bren, I’m gonna fucking come,” I groan, body trembling, and my head keeps pushing against the pillow under my head, messing up my hair, making me look like a fucking whore by the time we’re done.

My muscles tighten around his fingers, and I’m right on the edge, and guttural groans rattle my chest as my eyes slip shut, and fuck, his fingers are in me, thick and long, pushing against my insides, his tongue is dragging along my shaft, and –

He pulls back just as I’m about to lose it, his fingers slipping out. “Fuck,” I hiss, biting on my lower lip. My cheeks feel wet. My body jerks, overwhelmed and overworked.

“Hey,” he says, voice rough, and it’s his raspy blowjob voice that I recognise by now. A warm hand presses against my stomach, slowly moving in circles, and I try to breathe, so on edge that I feel like I’m about to break. “It’s okay,” he says, his fingers now dancing over my ribs. I try to respond or nod or something, but I only lick my lips, the bottom one swollen from me biting on it.

He doesn’t waste time in moving over me, our cocks making contact as he settles between my legs. His mouth travels from my shoulder to my neck, angry bites, and his hands find mine, our fingers lacing together as he moves my arms over my head. He kisses me – I don’t kiss him, no, I’m just taking whatever he decides to give, feeling too far gone to try and fight him, although a part of me is telling me to do just that. Fight him, fight him, but I did and it got me nowhere, nowhere except in this bed with him. He pins me down, using his weight as leverage, and my stomach gets smeared further when drops of pre-come land on it, our cocks pressed between our bodies. His tongue pushes in to meet mine, his head tilting for the perfect angle, and he’s taking his time kissing me. I don’t even realise he’s positioning us, shifting his hips, until his cock slides between my legs where I’m open and ready, and he’s got me yearning for it.

“Stay,” he orders. His hands slide back down my arms. “Stay.”

I feel dizzy. I nod. I’ll stay. I’ll keep still.

He reaches down between our bodies, taking his cock in his hand, and he kisses my chin. A drop of sweat rolls down to the tip of his nose, dropping onto me. I swear my heart is beating irregularly, a manic race and then just skipping four beats, and it’s all him everywhere. He presses the tip of his cock against my hole, and the only reason that I know I can take him is because I’ve done it before. It doesn’t seem to help me much because the head of his cock feels huge rubbing over me, spreading his pre-come, and my fingers find the barred headboard, taking firm holds of the bars, my body tense in anticipation. I spread my legs further.

He lifts my hips, and I let him because this is what he reduces me to. He groans at the further contact, and it sounds so dirty, and the swollen head of his cock is pressing against me. He pushes forward. My body resists, but he keeps the pressure constant until my muscles give way. I feel the exact moment my body opens up for him, and once he’s got the head of his cock in me, it’s easy. For him. He slides in deep, forcing me open.

Okay. Okay, not a good idea. No, this definitely wasn’t your golden moment, Ross, you stupid fucking cockslut.

He leans back over me, groaning, and I focus on not whimpering or hissing because he’s bigger than I remembered – suppressed memories – and he’s pushing me open, so fucking deep in me, making me feel so full, and I’m not used to this, being taken like this, letting anyone –

“Jesus,” he groans, “you’d think no one’s fucked you since.”

My head rolls to the side, and I bite on my arm, anything to gag myself. You’d think that, yeah. You’d certainly think that.

Pain trickles up my spine from between my legs, a stinging throb, and the second wave is darker, another kind of throb – so full, so open, and with no escape, none whatsoever.

He kisses me hard, like no one’s kissed me before, messy and heated, and his hips draw back. I feel every single inch of his cock in me, retreating before pushing back in, forcing me open again. And that. _That_ feels so –

“Fuck, fuck, god, Jesus,” I swear against his lips, and he says, “Yeah,” voice overtaken by sex. Beneath the discomfort is a liquid sensation that is radiating through me. I hold onto the headboard like I’m hanging on for dear life, and fuck, fuck, fuck, this shouldn’t feel like this. I’m not tensing up or shutting down. I’m relaxing into it, because I know I’ll get more if I do, and I want more. I want to see what happens next.

His hands slide up my arms again, grabbing onto the flesh halfway. He keeps me pinned down as his hips start a slow rhythm. He breaks the kiss, supporting himself above me, his eyes wild and dark. My legs are spread wide, and he’s snugly between them, and I can’t get away from this, can’t push him away when he’s this close, and I can only let him in.

“Ryan,” he manages, face flashing with pleasure. “Oh god, you feel so good right now.”

So does he.

It’s a sweaty, dirty affair, rippled with ecstasy when the pain subsides, and then all that’s left is the pleasure of him fucking me. The hotel bed is a nice bed, meant for things far more graceful than this, something other than him on me, pinning me down, in me, but it’s better than last time, which is worrying in itself because I liked it far more than I ever should have. He grips my shoulder with one hand, the other on my hip, and his breaths wash over my lips as he fucks me, the kissing sporadic and muddled because we can’t focus on it.

“Come on,” he says. “Move with me.” His voice drops an octave, his mouth travelling to my ear. He thrusts in brutally deep, and I grip the headboard, willing myself not to groan. “Show me you want it,” he whispers, but I can’t, don’t want to, because if I move too, it’ll feel too good and then he’ll know. I can barely handle letting him fuck me, let alone – “ _Ryan_.” It’s a command. Fuck him, _fuck_ him.

I feel the drag of his cock in me as he slides out, and when he pushes back in, I buck up my hips, meeting him halfway. We both stop and gasp, and greed suddenly bubbles in me as I let myself groan fully into the thick air of the room. His breathing hitched in a way it hasn’t before, and I want to please him, want to trace the source of pleasure.

“We’re good,” he breathes shallowly, picking up the rhythm again, and I’m not sure if he’s referring to our recovery from the sudden blinding pleasure or to the way in which our bodies work together, but it doesn’t matter. I move one leg to hook over his waist, and he gets closer, pushes in deeper, and I thrust back against him, my upper body kept still as my arms ache, fingers firmly holding the bars, but I move my hips to get as much of him in me as I can.

It doesn’t give me any of the control. He’s fucking me, determining the depth and speed, and I take it all, start asking for more, hoping he’ll oblige, and the thrusts are harder now, his cock pushing against my prostate and overwhelming me with pleasure.

“When you go,” he says, and I nod, yeah, god, anything – faster, even faster now, oh god – “When you go, Ryan,” he says, and it sounds like he’s trying to make a point. He breaks off into a moan, swearing, and this is driving him insane too. “Just don’t forget,” he says, and his lips find mine, and I nod, breaking the rule and letting a hand come down to take a hold of the back of his head, deepening the kiss. “Promise,” he gasps.

“I promise, fuck, I –” He puts more force into his thrusts, like he has barely even started and now has renewed vigour. My eyelids slip shut, his lips brushing mine. I try to hold on, pulling him closer. “Fuck me,” I whisper, my neck and face feeling hot as the words leave my lips. “Brendon, please don’t stop, don’t –”

“Hand,” he says, and yeah, of course. When I’ve obeyed and my hand is back above my head, he says, “You don’t even know what you’re doing to me, fucking _hell_.”

My senses feel heightened, and my skin is radiating heat – the sex, the rational part that’s humiliated, the irrational, winning part that doesn’t care – and that’s when I realise that he’ll make me come. He will fuck my ass until I come from it, and at least the last time that didn’t happen, at least then it wasn’t his dick in me that got me off, but this time it will be, and I know it now. My body is getting more and more wired, like a clock being winded too tight, and as my muscles clench around him, I feel him even better, every single inch.

His hand moves from my hip to my cock, his long fingers wrapping around it firmly, and I choke on my breath. I wish he wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t push me this far, wouldn’t make me. We’re both covered in sheens of sweat, but my stomach feels wetter from where I’ve been leaking onto myself. Now his strokes are helped by the pre-come, and his fist loosens whenever he gets to the base, his grip tightening on the upstroke, like he’s trying to milk it out of me. It’s working, too, and I groan, “Harder, god, go harder –” and he does, fucking me deep and hard and jerking me off. I cling onto the bars, my back arching, and he muffles my moans with his mouth, like he’s in such control, like he’s not falling to pieces, like it’s that easy for him.

He knows exactly when I’m about to tip over the edge because he breaks the hungry kisses and pulls back, pupils wide, eyes dark and taking me in, and I object to that, don’t want him to watch me as he makes me come, but I’m too far gone to do anything about it. He’s watching me, gripping my shoulder, fucking me, fucking me, his thumb brushing the head of my cock, and our eyes meet.

It all slips from view when I climax, and my muscles clench around his cock, and it makes me come harder. My hips jerk, I’m loud, loud enough to echo to the next room, nonsense, nonsense, every muscle, every cell, white flashes of pleasure, and then he groans, bites down on the sensitive spot below my left ear and spills inside me. I feel him, all of him, feel so wanted when he fills me up with his come. I knew it was just a facade, that he had no control either.

His lips find mine, our tongues meeting. Our hips still move, he’s riding it out, still stroking my cock, and the come cools down on my stomach. He lets out guttural groans, all pleasure from his orgasm, a hint of awe in it. I come to a stop before he does, too spent and too sensitive to move. His thrusts are slow, slower, and then he stops moving.

My fingers are stiff when they loosen their hold of the headboard. I break the kiss, keep my eyes closed, try to catch my breath. Oh god. Oh fucking god.

His nose slides across my cheek. “So that was kind of amazing too.”

I lick my lips and try to put words together to compile sentences that I could then say in a coherent fashion. He’s kissing my jaw line, his hands sliding up my arms to my wrists where his thumbs press into the pulse points. He’s cut right through again, deeper than before. “Fuck you,” I say with as much bite as I can muster.

He laughs, and I bury my face in the crook of his neck. The time we’re about to spend apart will get deep into my bones.


	5. No Beginnings

The branches of the pine trees are drooping down with a heavy coat of snow, and it reminds me of the early sixties when I’d stand on this porch as an entirely different person. I was only a child, my nose cold, watching the snowfall. It was so different from Las Vegas where it never snowed, where there were no pine trees, and the one good thing that my old man ever managed to do for me was to bring me up here every winter. It taught me one thing at the age of six: there was a world outside Vegas.

I have nothing in common with that little boy anymore, nothing but some scrapes of a shared past. Then the music happened, and LA happened, and the band happened, and the drugs and the booze and the women and the paralysing realisation that it couldn’t last forever and that it just might kill me before the inevitable end, and every day it became more crystallised that I didn’t want what I had gained. I think I’m on the right path now. I think I might be.

The two cars we rented stand outside the cabin, both covered in the snow that fell earlier. Our steps have trampled the snow and made paths here and there, and everyone else is asleep, but I can’t. I keep smoking, wrapped up in Gabe’s jacket, watching the way the trees sway in the mild, midnight breeze. It’s not that cold, fifteen degrees, maybe. The air’s got enough bite to feel on my skin, but I’m not giving up yet.

I keep humming a song in my head, a song that didn’t exist when we got here a bit over a week ago. It’s now my favourite song, and I like humming it, like going to my notebook and changing the lyrics here and there. We’ve got it on tape now, another one ticked off, but I’ll keep working on the lyrics until last minute.

The music isn’t turning me into an insomniac. We’ve scrapped some of the songs and brought some other ones back to life. And they sound like they should, so they’re not keeping me awake. Jon said that we’ve been here for ten days. I don’t see time as days, but simply as time: an endless string of hours, no beginnings, no ends. It’s a blur of writing music and drinking with the guys and getting the firewood done, and I haven’t been counting. Counting is remembering, and I don’t need to be reminded. I feel his absence, anyway.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. They never mentioned that absence makes you feel like you’re walking around dismembered.

“For a Vegas kid, I’m impressed by how you handle the cold,” Jon’s voice comes, and I look over my shoulder to see the cabin door open. A light is on in the kitchen, casting shadows on the porch. That’s one of the biggest changes from my childhood: electricity. It’s like a different cabin altogether. In my memories, it was damp and cold and smelled of dead animals. Now the large pantry is a guest room, the fireplace in the lounge is actually working, and the two bedrooms in the back have new, wider beds, and none of the floorboards are loose. It’s all new and pleasant, and the guys don’t seem to realise that it was never pleasant before.

“I’ve got surprises up my sleeves,” I say, watching Jon wrap his jacket around himself tighter.

“You alright?” he asks me, and I nod. I’m alright. More now than ever. I get out my cigarette pack, but he rejects it with his palm faced my way. “Shouldn’t,” he says, and I shrug and put it back in my jean pocket. Our breaths rise into the air and my fingers feel stiff, but nothing can shift the tranquillity of our surroundings right now.

“You okay?” I now ask in return, because Jon did go to bed. He’s sharing with Gabe and complained on our second morning here that Gabe always ends up draping all over him. Patrick kept laughing while I just wondered if Gabe seriously was trying to hit on Jon. Jon seemed annoyed enough without even knowing Gabe has a habit of sleeping with men. Patrick’s in the pantry, or the converted guest room, I suppose, with its narrow single bed, and I’ve got my old man’s room. You’d think that lying there would evoke bad spirits, his spirit, a ghost clinging onto me, but it hasn’t been like that at all. Nothing happens. I look at the corners, waiting for something to step out of the shadows, but nothing ever does.

It’s like it’s really over now. The past has really died.

Jon sighs slightly. “Gabe’s snoring.”

I laugh and suck on my cigarette. “Yeah, he tends to do that.” Jon quirks an eyebrow at me, and I say, “You think we’ve never passed out on each other?”

“Point taken.” He still looks uneasy, like he has been discovering his losses while I’ve been discovering my gains.

“I know what’s up,” I tell him.

“I know, I know,” he says quickly, the words rushed. He grimaces slightly. “It’s hard to explain, man. I’ve spent a decade with Cassie, and I know you and – and Gabe think it’s dull, makes me dull, or –”

“Jon, man, we’ve never –”

“– but she’s my soulmate. You know? And I miss her. We don’t even have a telephone here, have to drive down to town to call her. I love hanging out with you guys, but I’m not in love with you, am I?” he asks, laughing a tad miserably. “You spend that much time with someone, it’s hard to function without them.”

“You should marry her, then.”

“Oh, I plan to. Trust me, I will.” He sounds so certain that I smile despite myself, and he glares at me, but he’s not really mad. “Sounds naïve to you, but that’s because you’re a cynic, Ryan Ross.”

“I’m mortally wounded by such accusations.”

“Like anything could ever get to you,” he says and rubs his nose that’s reddening in the cold.

“Something just might one day,” I say, the cigarette finishing, and I flick it over the railing to the snow. I stuff my hands into the jacket pockets as I blow out the last of the smoke. It’s thicker than our breaths, than the carbon dioxide we emit around us.

I only half-lied to Jon. I would have lied fully had he let me finish the sentence. Gabe’s often said that Jon’s done for, tamed and so on and so forth, but if Jon’s too monogamous, Gabe’s promiscuity certainly compensates. Gabe gets along well with Cassie because Gabe gets along with everyone, and Gabe doesn’t mean to be cruel when he talks about Jon’s ball and chain. He likes Cassie. Cassie still doesn’t like me, but I hardly ever see her so it’s not an issue. Stealing Jon away up to the cabin probably isn’t making me any shinier in her eyes either. I’m sure I’ve said some nasty things about their relationship too, in a drunken or drugged up haze, or even when sober, just to make a point of me not having to leave band practice because my girlfriend’s best friend’s brother’s cat needs feeding or some other chore that only comes about in a well-established relationship. But we don’t think Jon is dull because of it. We don’t think he’s less than what he is. Hell, it makes him who he is, and the last time I checked, Gabe and I both loved the man.

We’re just assholes, Gabe and I.

“So what’s up with you?” he asks, and when I give him a ‘what do you mean’ eyebrow lift, he says, “You know. _You_.” I remain as confused as before. “You’ve been acting weird all week. Or, well. You’ve been acting weird all year come to think of it, but even more so lately. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad.”

“The world’s pretty black and white to you, huh?” I ask just to change the subject. He’s not stupid. He knows I’m changing the subject.

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” he says, but I know that he won’t. I’m not about to tell him, and he could never put the puzzle pieces together himself. He shivers slightly. “How long do you think we’ll still be here?”

“Two weeks, maybe. The music is...”

“Yeah. Yeah, fuck. The music’s really coming together, huh?” he asks, eyes shining and a proud smile emerging on his lips. He still trusts me, even if he knows there’s a lot I’m not including him in. He’s included in the music, and that’s the most important part of our friendship. And I’m not sure if it’s the stress-free environment or the painkillers I take four times a day behind the guys’ backs, but my arm has no longer been acting out either. “It makes all the bad stuff worth it,” Jon says. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m pining away here, but man, going to bed and having Gabe molesting me in my sleep? Makes me miss Cassie in ways I didn’t know I could miss her. But the music makes it all worthwhile. We keep writing songs like these, I’ll happily stay until the end of the century.”

“We won’t need that much time. Two weeks.”

“Maybe longer if we don’t get anything done over the next few days,” he says. We had a band meeting earlier, and we agreed to take it easy for a while, provide enough material for the documentary, sure, but also take it easy, kick back, drink too much and go to bed when the sun rises. “Shane’s coming in the morning then, yeah? Did Patrick say he’d pick them up?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think he did,” I say, nodding excessively, the butterflies now there, and Jon probably thinks that I don’t understand and can’t relate, but he has no idea.

“Far out,” he smiles. “Well, don’t stay out here for too long or you’ll freeze to death.”

“I’ll make sure I won’t.” I push my hands deeper into the pockets, giving Jon a goodnight nod as he heads back inside. My fingers touch something papery in the left pocket, and I pull it out as Jon closes the door quietly. It’s a Polaroid picture, a thin square thing in Gabe’s pocket. It’s been taken in the studio control room, half of Bob’s face in it, Jon with his back turned, but they’re not the point, the focus or the meaning. It’s a picture of Vicky and me. Gabe did say that he approved of that leather skirt, and Vicky told him to back off, and there was nothing unusual in any of it. As for me, it was a day like any other. Gabe took the picture at some point without any of us realising. Vicky’s laughing in the shot, and I’m grinning at her.

I don’t know if Vicky’s the point or if I’m the point. Either way, I get the uncomfortable feeling of knowing too much, and I quickly put the Polaroid back into Gabe’s pocket.

If Gabe and I are assholes about Jon’s relationship, it’s just because we’re jealous.

* * *

The table in the kitchen is the same. The wonky, crude letters are the same, made by a knife and an eight-year-old’s determination and boredom: G.R.R. III. Dad gave me a beating when he saw what I had done to the table. I deserved it, to be fair. I place the plate over the letters carefully, the piece of toast nothing to cheer about, but I’m more focused on the voices outside: laughter, car doors, steps on the porch.

I don’t know why I’m nervous or buzzing like this, why I’ve been nervous all damn morning, my pulse picking up steadily. Now I hide in the kitchen and wait. The door opens in the lounge. Footsteps. Banging to get the snow off. Gabe’s explanatory voice of “this is the lounge, sorry about the mess”, but of course it’s a mess with all of our music gear stuffed into a single room, and a familiar, “Oh wow, it’s so cosy,” and how nice that Shane approves, and I strain my hearing, frozen to my seat in the kitchen, and Patrick asks if he can take one of the bags, and Jon says that he’ll go get the suitcase from the car, and the commotion keeps going, their voices and footsteps and the showing to their rooms, and then it quiets down again, their voices muffled as a bedroom door closes, and they’re all convened there now, and –

“I like your place.”

I look up, and he’s in the doorway, smiling. He’s unbuttoned his coat, but he’s wearing red mittens I’ve never seen before, and they look slightly ridiculous on him if it weren’t for how they look perfect. His smile reaches his sparkling eyes, and I read the unspoken message, a simple ‘Hey’.

I lean back in my chair, a rush of blood in my ears. Ten days, Jon said. I didn’t count because you can’t count infinity.

“Hey,” I whisper. And it all locks into place.

* * *

“So it’s done?” I ask, and he nods. We’re at the start of the hallway that leads from the lounge to the bedrooms, and he’s leaning against the wall while I mimic him, our socked toes almost touching. “How’d it go?”

“It was – God, it was _incredible_ ,” he says, clearly wanting to gush about it but not being able to. The others are spread out in the living room, Shane taking out his equipment and explaining how it works to an intrigued Gabe as Jon and Patrick laugh over the beers they’re having. “And Bob was so helpful, the man was amazing, and it turned out so good, I can’t tell you. And Bob said he liked it. He honestly said it was really good,” he beams, but I’m not at all surprised. I knew it’d be amazing. Everything he does just about is. “I brought you a copy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You deserve to be among the first ones to hear it,” he says, and we can’t seem to take our eyes off each other. My hands are stuffed into my pockets because when they weren’t, they kept trying to reach out on their own accord, grab his hand, pull him over, kiss him on the lips, entwine myself around him, not caring that everyone’s here. “When Ian saw the studio, he just about died.”

“What’d you tell him?”

He shrugs. “Something about winning it in a card game against you. To be fair, I don’t think he cared much for the how, he was just excited to –”

“What you two talking about?” Patrick asks, and Brendon looks over his shoulder into the lounge as I see the guys all looking our way now. I don’t know how obvious it is, the body language, how subtle, because Brendon’s got his hips cocked in this certain way that I know is an invitation, and I know I can’t take my eyes off of him.

“Hunting,” I reply, and Jon looks slightly sceptical.

“Now this,” Gabe says, drawing the attention back to himself. He’s pointing at a button on the video camera he’s got on his lap. “What does this one do?”

Shane and the others focus on the technology once more. Gabe’s the best accomplice I’ve ever had.

“So where’s this demo?” I ask quietly, and Brendon nods towards the bedrooms. “Lead the way.”

He takes one look at my band and his boyfriend and then heads down the hall to Jon and Gabe’s room, where their bags are for now. They’re only staying for four days. It was Patrick’s idea, actually. When the music started flowing, he just said that it felt like the kind of thing that should be on the documentary, and Gabe called Vicky the next time we went to town, Shane plus one because we have no room. I don’t know if Brendon volunteered or if Shane chose him for selfish reasons, but it hardly matters because Brendon is now here. The sleeping arrangements are still obscure, but Shane brought sleeping bags so the lounge will probably be left to Shane. And, well, Brendon, though I want him in my bed. Maybe if I told Shane that, look, man to man here, I want to borrow your boyfriend for the night. Don’t make a big deal out of it, Valdes – you don’t own him. No one does, but we’re having fun trying, aren’t we?

Brendon opens up a battered suitcase on Gabe and Jon’s bed – clothes and some books – and then he finds a tape somewhere between rolled up sock pairs. I close the door behind us as he turns back around.

“Here,” he says, exhaling heavily, and he looks nervous and excited as he passes the tape to me. “It’s, um, it’s just the four songs that we did, and they’re not final versions or anything, but it’s something, right? At least it’s something, and –”

I kiss him, my hand taking a fistful of his shirt. Been wanting to kiss him since he arrived, since I left New York. He sighs against my lips, his arms wrapping around my neck. The tape presses into the small of his back as I place a hand there, keeping him close. “I’m sure the songs are unbelievably good,” I say, our noses brushing together, and I could count the lashes that are dark against his cheeks, could count the shades of brown in his eyes, my lips barely touching his. “You have any idea how much I missed you?” I ask, and he laughs like he’s embarrassed.

“How much?” he asks, and I kiss him again, now with more force, putting everything into it. I wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him closer until we’re pressed together, and he feels amazing in my arms, and Jon’s words echo in my head, and that’s it, that’s what this is.

Voices right outside the door tear us apart, and a second later the door opens. I’m still wiping my mouth as Jon says, “You guys want beers or...” His voice fades away, and his brows knit together. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” I say while Brendon nods, “Yeah, definitely. Just fine.”

“Right. Okay. Um, so the beers?”

Brendon looks at me, eyebrows raised to his hairline. “Beers. Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Wouldn’t say no,” I concur, and as Brendon follows Jon back to the lounge, I quickly go drop off the tape in my room, where I put it on the nightstand, placing my notebook on top. Never to be lost or misplaced.

* * *

The guys make an extensive shopping list now that there are two more mouths to feed and since we’re out of food again. Brendon sits on the same couch as Shane, but they don’t touch, and Gabe asks if anyone else wants chicken except for him. Brendon looks tense now, thanks to Jon’s sudden invasion, no doubt, but Jon is just helping Gabe with the list, saying that he’s definitely going because he wants to call Cassie, and Shane’s volunteered to drive because he’s the only one who hasn’t had anything to drink today.

“Ryan, are you coming?” Shane asks me, and I lean my shoulder against the fireplace mantle, slowly sipping my beer. I look out of the window where it’s still light, but in a few hours the sun will set. I shake my head slowly.

“I was thinking I’d stay behind too,” Brendon says. “I’m exhausted from the flight, and –”

“Yeah, of course,” Shane cuts him off, tone laced in worry. Shane’s placed a hand on Brendon’s knee, squeezing it affectionately.

“Guess the three of us will hold up the fort then,” Patrick says, and my eyes focus on my drummer, who has glasses low on his nose and is wearing an ugly sweater with a moose on the front, which is perfect for our location but looks like it was made by his blind grandmother. Patrick smiles at me, not that awed smile anymore because it’s worn off. It’s the smile of a good friend, but right now Patrick really needs to be able to read the ‘no’ that should be visible on my face.

“Patrick, don’t tell me you’re abandoning me,” Gabe says miserably. “You know that Shane and Jon are going to talk about politics the entire drive, and I’ll _die_ of boredom. Patrick, cariño, amor, amor de mi vida...”

Patrick laughs, abashed, and shakes his head. “I really don’t –”

“You should go,” I say. That’s all I say. Patrick looks at me like he’s suddenly reminded of who he’s dealing with, and his cheeks flush slightly. “Keep Gabrielito there some company.”

“Thank you! Glad someone’s on my side,” Gabe says firmly.

“Sure. Okay. I’ll go,” Patrick mumbles.

Brendon’s quick to disappear, saying that he’s taking a shower and then a nap, and the guys pull on boots and wrap themselves in their thick jackets, checking five times that someone’s got the list and that acceptably obscene amounts of alcohol and cigarettes have been written down. Shane goes to start up the car, and I stand in the open doorway, wrapping my arms around myself as the cold hits me. Patrick is behind the car, signalling Shane where and how to reverse. It’s started snowing heavily, and the sky is giving us all it’s got, like it knows that it won’t get another chance for such a display until next winter.

Gabe stands next to me, zipping up his jacket. “I’ll try not to hurry back,” he says, keeping his eyes on the car that’s now turning the right way round. He’s not looking at me, but he looks like he wants some acknowledgement.

“Thanks.”

“Eh,” he shrugs. “What wouldn’t I do for my brothers, right?”

Brothers. I don’t know if he believes that or if he’s trying to throw me off the scent. I wouldn’t want to know the truth in any case.

He gets out a cigarette pack, winks at me, and descends the porch steps. I turn back to the lounge, and Jon’s standing by one of the couches, kicking back into motion when our eyes meet. “I’ll see you later, then,” he says, Patrick calling for him to hurry up.

“Yeah, man.” He squeezes past me, and I say, “Remember the vodka.”

I stay in the doorway until the four of them have crammed into the car and the backlights have vanished down the narrow and windy road towards the main road. It’s already getting darker, and the wind is picking up, and I close the door before the entire cabin feels like Antarctica.

And then they’re gone at last, and we’re alone.

It’s quiet. It’s absolutely quiet. No music, no Gabe, no sirens. My steps sound loud in my ears as I cross the room, and as I approach the back of the cabin, I hear running water. I see it in my mind’s eye already: transparent drops rolling past his shoulders, down his back, his chest.

I stop outside the bathroom door. It doesn’t have a lock, it never did. I undress myself. That’s how he should always be approached because that’s what will always happen in the end: he’ll strip you bare.

The bathroom is steamy, and the shower curtain shows a blurry silhouette of him standing in the tub, and my heart feels heavy, beating dark in my chest. I close the door quietly, breathing in the steam as I walk over. I draw the curtain aside. He doesn’t flinch or startle. He’s facing me, and lather has caught at his left ear and he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. His lips turn upwards into a smile, and the want and the urgency, they’ve never felt as burning, and still I have all the time in the world.

“C’mere,” he says. I step in, and my hand slides across his stomach.

* * *

“I do get to worry,” he argues, snuggled beneath a dozen blankets “It’s a fucking _storm_ out there.”

“Precisely,” I say from my couch. “Would they start driving back in weather like this? No. They really wouldn’t.” Which is why it’s ridiculous we’re on different couches. Even with all of Gabe’s diversions, they should have been back at least two hours ago. It’s dark outside, and the wind is rattling the windows while the fireplace keeps flickering and radiating warmth into the room. “They’re not coming back tonight.”

“But what if a tree fell on the car or something?” he asks, forehead wrinkled in worry.

I brought the radio through from the kitchen, and Howlin’ Wolf is playing _Smokestack Lightning_ , and he’s howling his blues, alright, downright howling, “Oh tell me, baby, where did ya stay last night?” We’re waiting for the local news, but I already know what happened: they drove into town, and then the blizzard started. They decided to try and wait it out, but it only got worse, and the inn’s right in the centre, and it certainly isn’t full this time of year, and that’s where they are. They’ll drive back up tomorrow morning. We’ve got all night, him and I, but he’s perched on the couch, telling me to stay on the other one just in case they come back because we wouldn’t hear them coming what with the wind being so loud.

The seven o’clock news start, the transmission rattling and crackling, but the male voice is comprehensible enough. When he says, “Highway 83 is closed off north of Wilton due to heavy snowfall that has stopped all traffic –” I say, “See? I told you so.”

He breathes out slowly, relaxing. “Well, as long as they’re alright and not stranded out there.”

“They’re fine,” I say for the hundredth time just as the newscaster says that the road should be reopened by noon tomorrow. “Now can I sit on the same couch as you?”

“No. You have cold fingers.”

“Do not,” I argue, pressing the pads of my fingers into my palms, trying to get the blood circulating a bit better. “We’ve got a cabin in the woods, a roaring fire, and not a single soul miles around. This could be a damn romantic evening if you just let me sit over there.”

He laughs. “We don’t _do_ romantic, Ryan.”

I don’t see why not.

His worry seems to subside, however, now that he knows there is a good reason for the guys not having returned. I pick up our former conversation, his demo tape still in the recorder. I listened to it five times in a row while he sat on the couch, trying to hide behind the blankets, his cheeks tinged red. “You’ve got an incredible voice,” I say. He looks pleased but also like my words are too good to be true. “I haven’t heard anyone ever sing like that. It’s something new. Something groundbreaking. You’re using your voice as its own instrument.”

The music isn’t anything I’d write. Jon once said that my music is “brooding”, even when it’s a full on rock explosion like it often was with The Followers. The dark aura has always been there in my work, and I know that. Brendon’s music doesn’t have that. His music is lighter, something you might hear on the radio, more commercial sounding. A pop rock feel to the songs. But then you listen to the lyrics and realise he’s trying to say something. It’s a blend of styles, and I remember what I told him and Ian on their mic night: it’s got potential. It’s got a fuck load of potential because it’s good.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says, smiling slightly as his eyes are fixed on the live flames. “That’s pretty cool. You’re talented, so. That’s a good sign. That you like it.”

“My opinion’s worth shit. People just think I’m smart and knowledgeable because I’m famous.”

“It still means something to me.”

My chest expands for no obvious reason.

“I want more copies of your demo. I want to pass it onto people.” I already said this too, halfway through the second song on our first listen. Sure, he could put tapes in envelopes and mail them to labels, have the tape piled up under dozens of other tapes to be listened to at some point. But he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t because he’s got me, and I know people, and he deserves to skip the queues and the bureaucracy and the middlemen. I’m not saying I can get him signed. I’m saying that I know people who can, and that my word has weight in it.

“Ryan, I don’t know if –”

“You want this. Don’t you?”

“I wanted it when I was younger. Then I realised it was just a silly dream. We can’t all be rock stars, can we? So I let it go. Focused on what my life really was. Then I toured with The Followers, and I... I found myself writing songs again. I’d seen that it could be done. The dream could be attained, but... maybe I’m just too old now.” His tone is testing the waters, a bit embarrassed like people are sometimes when they’re honest and say that, yes, really, they want to become astronauts or models. _Really._ Sometimes it takes as much balls to say what you want to do as to really go for it.

“You’re twenty-five. There’s still time to change the road you’re on.”

He grins, and his face turns mock serious. “And when I’m famous, I’m bu-uy-ing a stairway to heaven.”

“Good plan. That’s what you should do.” He laughs, but I don’t mean to distract him from the point or let him change the subject. “Look, all I can do is give the demo to a few guys, who might listen to it, might not, might pass it on, might not. What do you have to lose?”

He shrugs, looking small. “I don’t know.” It sounds like he wants to say ‘a lot’, but I can’t imagine what that could be. Bartending at the club or doing his non-profit internship for the promotion company? I know he has had his heart set on making his own connections, making it without any help, but I’m only trying to speed up his inevitable discovery. The Followers had help, too – Joe slept with the daughter of a label’s CEO, and she slipped our demo on top of the pile. No one in the business comes out clean, and me helping Brendon out if I can is pretty innocent compared to what some people have done.

“Okay. I guess,” he sighs.

“Well, good. That’s settled, then. Also, I have to say that I’m making my move now. Just warning you.”

“What?”

“Gonna invade your couch and join you under those blankets. Then I’ll fake a yawn and stretch to wrap my arm around you and then I’ll try to get you to make out with me a little bit.”

“Like we’re googly-eyed teenagers, huh?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” I say, and I love the way I can make him laugh, when he thinks I’m being a moron, and I swear I don’t make such lame passes at others, but I know he’ll laugh and that’s why I do it.

These days, that’s why I do everything I do.

* * *

The curtains are new, a pale yellow and too bright with the morning sun shining through them. The darkness has passed, the storm has subsided, the wind has settled down. It looks like the world has started new, and it’s decided to be as beautiful as it can this time.

It’s still too early for me to greet it, and I close my eyes. Brendon’s back is pressed against my chest, and he’s breathing evenly in his sleep. We’re sharing a pillow, and my arm is resting under it while the other has curled around his chest. He’s warm and soft and alive, like he is the centre of it all, that’s what it feels like when I feel the thud of his heart against my fingertips. His arm rests over mine, and I’ve never felt as relaxed in my life. My nose brushes against his hair, and his hair smells like sex, and I don’t really know how we managed that last night.

This is what it’d be like.

There’d be no one else in the cabin. Just the two of us. And, I don’t know, maybe we just felt like some downtime, needed some privacy, some peace and quiet. Whatever the reason. And the world could wait with its recording schedules and tour plans and crazy fans and old enemies and new enemies and album release dates, because that would all slip from view. And we’d do nothing special. We’d make breakfast, we’d cut down firewood, we’d go for walks, we’d listen to the radio and sing along to forties blues songs, he’d play some guitar and I’d try and cook up something edible, and maybe we’d play chess or just talk, god, we’d just talk, and then we’d have a shower and I’d fuck him against the wall, and then later he’d laugh by the fire at something stupid I said, and we’d go to bed, wake up and repeat.

I kiss the nape of his neck with dry lips, as gently as I can. I don’t want to wake him up. I want to let him sleep for as long as he wants to.

We’ve never done this before. We’ve slept in beds, taken post-coital naps, shared a bed through the night a few times, but I’ve never woken up to find him asleep in my arms, to find myself holding him as close to me as I can. To wake up to a feeling of unity, of being a part of something bigger, something I can’t quite figure out but can still name.

I’ve never done this before in my life.

It’s him. Yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds like something he’d manage to do.

He stirs, and I nuzzle the spot behind his ear that he loves getting kissed. He hums, sounding pleased, and he turns to lie on his back. He’s got a lazy smile on his lips, his eyes half parted. He looks sleepy and has bed hair, and I study every detail as my hand moves to trace the features of his face, my fingertips moving on his cheek. His lips part, and he’s about to say something, but I press my forefinger against his soft lips, silencing him. His eyes flutter open, revealing dark brown irises, and he looks at me questioningly.

I let my finger slide to his jaw, and my hand settles on the side of his neck. “I love you.”

He exhales softly. Not like it’s a surprise. And it all comes together, then, the past and the present and the future. Truthfully, I don’t know much of anything. I’m all talk. I’ve seen this country and I’ve seen a few others, and I’ve seen a lot of people and I’ve heard a lot of things, but I didn’t understand any of it. Didn’t understand because I didn’t understand myself, but now it’s all falling into place.

His hand moves up to grab the back of my head, and the kiss is crushing like he doesn’t want us to say words that are inadequate, anyway. I kiss him, feeling torn open, closer to him than I’ve ever felt to anyone, and that’s where I want to keep him. At the core. I want him to know all the things no one has ever known. Want him to be the one. Want him.

The kiss deepens, but it’s not rushed. We shift until I’m on top, and he tastes stale and he tastes perfect, and my heart feels heavy and my heart feels light, and the rest of me feels weak, weak at the sight of him, at the feel of him.

I breathe him in, all senses heightened. My hands slip through his soft hair. The energy spreading through me is new, almost nervous even as it is consuming. “Want to be inside you,” I whisper, lips brushing his, and a delicious half-gasp escapes his lips.

I want to take my time, want to go slow and soft and look into his fucking eyes, all of it, because the universe rearranges itself for us. It does. He rearranges me.

His hands are running down my spine and back up, and the slow kiss contains more passion and more feeling than any heated, hard kiss I’ve shared with him, and what I feel for him is in every cell of me, bubbling over and consuming me from within.

“Please,” he gasps in between a kiss, sounding overwhelmed. He wants it too. Needs it as much as I do.

He breaks the kiss, eyes suddenly wider, wider. His mouth hangs open, and he looks alarmed. “What?” I ask, but he hushes me, looking to the door, and then I hear it too. Banging. Shoes against the floor. Gabe’s voice.

“Fuck,” Brendon swears, but I don’t _care_ , but he does and by extension that means that I care too, and I roll off of him quickly and reluctantly. He’s out of bed like he’s been hit by lightning – smokestack lightning – wiping his mouth and flattening his hair and pulling on boxers that aren’t even his. “How late is it?” he asks, looking out of the window where it’s light, lighter, and we slept in, but we had the right to.

“Don’t know. I’ll keep them out there and you slip back to your room.” I grab a pair of pants and pull them on with no underwear beneath. “Alright?”

“Okay. Alright.”

Gabe’s voice is calling out what sounds like ‘Honey, we’re home!’

“Don’t you worry about anything,” I tell him, sweeping him in for a kiss that takes him by surprise. I feel a fraction of the stress leaving him, and he appears more in control when we part. I will handle this. He never needs to worry about anything. “And by the way, you look dashing this morning,” I add with a sly grin, and he lets out a quiet, disbelieving laugh as his eyes smile at me.

A cold chill hits me in the hallway, flying in from the open door and the men and grocery bags that have now come in.

“There he is,” Gabe says, spotting me first, and I run my hands through my hair quickly as I get to the lounge.

“You guys got stuck in town?” I ask, and Patrick launches into a blow by blow account of their adventure, and Shane looks around so I say that Brendon’s still sleeping in Jon and Gabe’s room since, well, there was a vacant bed, and Shane seems content with that although he looks longing, too, like the unexpected departure from his boyfriend made his heart ache.

Unsure if Brendon is still in my room, waiting for the right moment to sneak across the hallway to the other room without being spotted, I show all the guys to the kitchen to put the food away. I try to smile, but there’s a hard blade stuck into my guts, and somewhere deep within me an angry wave is saying ‘I hate you for coming back so soon,’ and ‘I never wanted any of you to return, you should’ve just left us here by ourselves. We were good. We were perfect.’

We really were.

The guys empty the paper bags, and Jon heads back out but I block him quickly. “Not gonna help out?” I ask, and he frowns, his gaze dropping from my eyes to my bare upper half.

I hear doors open and close. Jon looks over my shoulder, probably having heard it too. “Just going to put my coat away,” he says, slipping into the lounge where he throws his jacket on top of the couch that’s still covered in the blankets that Brendon and I used last night. I look down the hallway, scratching my head, and Jon says, “You look...”

I focus on him. “Yeah?”

He seems to be in a loss of words. A door opens, and Brendon steps out of the second bedroom. I have no idea why he got dressed because he’s now down to a pair of pyjama pants, and his hair is tousled, and he yawns and lifts a hand our way. “Mornin’.” He points down the hallway. “Shower.”

“We’ll fix breakfast,” I tell him, and he gives me a thumbs-up and he walks to the bathroom, like my existence is just a fleeting thought in the edges of his sleepy mind. He’ll be hungry after the sex we had. We better fix up a decent damn breakfast. I watch him until he disappears into the bathroom, and unlike yesterday I can’t go join him. It feels like a crime.

“Well,” Jon says, attracting my attention again. He chuckles, now seemingly more relaxed. “We should start getting lunch ready.”

“That late, huh?” I ask as I follow him to the kitchen.

“That late,” he says, and Gabe sighs dramatically that I should put some clothes on, for god’s sake, because my attempts at trying to seduce him are slowly but surely working, and I flip him off while Patrick says that’s sick. Shane smiles crookedly, clearly feeling out of place, and when I become aware that there’s at least one obvious bite mark on my lower stomach, I place my hand on it and finally go get dressed.

* * *

The alcohol has been flowing freely as we’ve settled in the lounge by the fire, and our voices get louder as our blood mixes with the vodka. I’m mostly quiet, just laughing at the stories the guys are telling, a stupid grin constantly stretched on my lips. Patrick’s sharing my couch, Brendon’s on the floor with a blanket beneath him, and the rest are on the second couch, empty beer bottles gathered at their feet.

I suck in the smoke from my cigarette, cheeks hollowing. Shane did some filming after lunch, and we played some new songs for him, and Brendon watched us playing, and I swear the music sounded a million times better than it ever has. But I haven’t gotten the chance to be alone with him, and it’s starting to get to me. When Shane interviewed Gabe, Jon asked me to figure out more songs with him, and after the recording, Brendon and Shane went on a _stroll_. Not a walk, but a _stroll_ – Shane’s words, not mine – and the two of them vanished for an hour and twenty-three minutes like there is anything worth seeing out there.

They left hand in hand too, like they’re so deep in rural areas that there’s no fear of someone seeing them holding hands, and although Brendon smiled at me when they got back – _the_ smile – I can’t shake off something disconcerting at the back of my brain.

Brendon laughs at something Jon says. I can’t take my eyes off of him. My heart keeps beating heavy and hard, and it’s not the alcohol because I’d need to drink for five more hours to get properly drunk. It’s just the way my heart always is now. Brendon. He’s it.

“That’s the more sensible arrangement,” Jon says, bringing the bottle to his lips, and I snap out of my thoughts and look over to the other couch.

“That really would be great,” Shane says. “I get these backaches.”

“What?” I ask, trying to follow the conversation.

“Sleeping arrangements,” he informs me. “Bren and I will take over the second bedroom. Jon doesn’t want to share with Gabe anymore.”

“I didn’t think it was _that_ bad,” Gabe says, sounding insulted.

“I’d wake up to find you drooling on me,” Jon says indignantly. “I’ll be just fine sleeping here in one of the sleeping bags.”

Gabe sighs dramatically. “Ryan, can I sleep with you instead?”

“No,” I say, and he glares at me. Brendon’s busy picking at the label of his beer, and something hard settles in my stomach. I want him to say no. I want him to say that he refuses to share a bed with Shane. They wouldn’t... They wouldn’t fuck, not here, surely not when they’re surrounded by other people, and Brendon isn’t quiet during sex, and the bed is squeaky, so no, they wouldn’t or couldn’t, but even then, that bed is not wide, and they’re bound to end up pressed together. And maybe they do that in New York every night, anyway, but somehow this time it hits too close to home.

This is our house. We made it ours last night, and now he’s going to someone else’s bed instead, and am I the only one who thinks there’s something inherently wrong in that picture?

“Well, if that’s settled, I should go to bed,” Shane says. “I need to be up early to set up the cameras.”

“That sounds like a plan,” I say. What I mean is _fuck off_. We’ll stay up all night drinking, and I’ll make sure Brendon doesn’t go to bed until the sun is up and Shane’s fiddling with his stupid cameras for a damn documentary I decided to do on a whim in order to get closer to Brendon. It worked. Worked like a charm. Why is Shane still here?

The others try to tell Shane to stay because they all like him, Patrick, Jon and Gabe. They all like the director, but Brendon doesn’t say anything, I’m pleased to note. And with Shane gone, Patrick can move to the other couch, and Brendon can sit next to me.

Shane gets up, shaking his head. “Need to get some sleep, you guys. Especially before I get too drunk. Can’t work with a hangover.”

“Well, goodnight if you really insist on it,” Patrick says mournfully. Shane, however, isn’t leaving. Instead he’s looking at Brendon.

“Bren? You coming?”

Brendon looks up from the beer bottle he has so intently been studying for a while now. I stare at him. Don’t you dare.

But Shane says it so casually, like he just assumes they go to bed together, at the same time, because that’s what they do, that’s how they work. After a pause, Brendon says, “Yeah,” getting up, smoothing down his shirt and not looking at me. He seems self-conscious, and I don’t know if it’s the fact of the gay couple going to bed at the same time in a house full of supposedly straight men, or if it’s just me. Because he’s not looking at me.

Brendon puts his bottle down on the mantle and flashes a quick goodbye smile. But he wouldn’t actually go. Not in our house, not because he knows now, and he’s mine now, I claimed him this morning, and he doesn’t need Shane for anything anymore.

“Night, guys,” he says, and his eyes land on me briefly. He looks... not sorry. Worried. Yeah. Like he’s worried.

Shane leads the way out, and as they disappear, scorching disappointment pools in my stomach.

Oh.

Gabe’s looking at me silently, Jon is doing the same, and Patrick’s already moved on to talk about the new apartment he’s moving into now that he’s making decent money.

My eyes flicker to where Brendon disappeared from view. My insides feel rotten.

“How about we stick to the spirits?” I ask lifelessly, and seeing that the vodka bottle has been finished, I go to the kitchen where the whiskey is. A stupid thing. God, so – Never mind. Who cares? Never mind, it’s nothing.

I lean against the counter and drink straight from the bottle. I hear a slight bang, and all my senses heighten momentarily. I don’t hear it again. It wasn’t the bed banging in the midst of sex because then I’d hear it again, or maybe they slowed down, or maybe it was just them getting into bed, and I try to breathe, try not to think about it. It’s all I can think about.

Fuck it. This place. This cabin needs more than a fucking renovation to transform itself into something pleasant. Something that doesn’t take stabs at me.

I take long sips of the bottle until finally my mind stops playing a reel of Shane doing filthy fucking things to Brendon, and Brendon loving it, head thrown back in pleasure. I know it’s just my imagination. I know, I know, but their touches feel so real.

The guys laugh in the living room. I march back out, grab my coat and inform them that I’ll be drinking in one of the cars.

The air doesn’t feel as cold as it actually is because I’ve been drinking, but my breath fogs up the car windows quickly. I find a pair of fingerless gloves in my jacket pocket, which is pointless because my fingers remain as cold as they were before. Brendon doesn’t like my cold fingers. I wonder what Shane’s blood circulation is like.

I sit in the light yellow Mercedes, quietly singing, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”, trying to distract myself from the cabin and whatever is happening inside it. I don’t know if it’s been two minutes or twenty, when knuckles knock against the window on the passenger’s side, and Jon is leaning down, peering through. He opens the door without an invitation, the car tilting as he sits down and settles in. “Hey.”

I hum and let my fingers trace the wheel. It’s a nice car. Vicky got us really nice cars. Jon talked about this one at length on the drive up, could hardly shut up about the purring sound as he pressed the accelerator.

“So you know how weird it is that you’re sitting out here in the middle of the night, right? Because you being you, you might not know.”

“Beats standing on the porch in the wind,” I argue and offer him the bottle. He takes a long gulp, and silence lands on us. I don’t feel much like talking, I just don’t want to be in that house right now.

“I know why you’re out here.” He stares out, towards the smudged squares of light that are the cabin windows. “I’m trying really fucking hard to understand it. I mean, it is... it is Brendon, isn’t it?” His voice has faded into a quiet and serious whisper.

I look at him in surprise. I thought he was going to say music or the meaning of life or death or anything other than the actual truth. My old band blew up on me when they found out, Spencer, my best fucking friend, was worried I wanted to fuck him too, my ex-girlfriend went into hysterics, Vicky nearly the same, Gabe just grinned but that’s Gabe, and Jon is – Jon is such an average guy. He wants a wife and children, and he wants security and retirement plans, wants real American values and all of it, but he’s not doing any of the things I’ve come to expect. He’s just sitting there.

“Yeah, it is,” I confirm, not at all sure how to handle this. “How long have you...?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe. A hunch? I don’t know. Maybe even for a month on some subconscious level, but now the truth’s just been staring me in the face. Need to own up to it, you know?” He takes another long sip, his breath rising into the air. It’s pitch black outside, and I’m glad we can’t quite see each other’s faces. He sighs. “It puts me in an awkward position, man. Shane’s become a good friend, and – Well, Brendon and I are cordial, I guess. I wish I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you.”

“No, but if I figured it out, how long’s it gonna take before someone else does too? And I mean – Cassie and Keltie are really good friends. If Cas finds out that I knew all this time –”

“Look. No one’s finding anything out.”

“Ryan.” He lets out a short laugh. “It’s written all over your face.” He looks at me, and I duck my head, not wanting him to see whatever he sees. It’s not that obvious. Can’t be because if it were, we would’ve been found out already. Or maybe it’s only now that it’s starting to get to me, that it’s finally leaking through the cracks. “Okay, so what’s... what’s going on with you two?”

A good question. A damn good question.

Gabe’s asked about us, but he’s nosy and jealous, and Vicky’s asked about us, but she’s nervous and jealous, but Jon... Jon sounds like he thinks I probably just want to talk about it. To someone. Anyone. Someone not me. I haven’t wanted to share it with others, but Jon’s a smart guy, and he understands these things – hell, he’s got Cassie, doesn’t he? – and I find myself leaning into my seat and letting it pour out.

“I don’t know. I swear to god, I don’t know. Sometimes, I think I know what’s going on with him, but then I realise I have no idea what he’s thinking. Don’t know what he’s feeling. And then I think I’ve got us figured out, that we’re on some solid ground, but then it’s all in my head or maybe it’s not, but I haven’t asked because we don’t – We’re two guys. We don’t talk about our fucking relationship. Well, not honestly, anyway. God. I just don’t know what’s going on with us.” I wonder if my rant makes any sense to Jon at all- I think of Brendon just getting up and going with Shane, and maybe he had no choice in that situation. Okay. But I just can’t even begin to guess what he thought while he stood up and left. “I don’t have Brendon fucking Urie figured out. No change there, I guess.” My words practically drip of bitterness.

“So you guys... have done this before..?” he asks, now finally sounding confused by our relations. I give him a long, long look, and I can just see the flash of realisation on his face. “Oh. Okay.” He sounds surprised.

Jon’s band didn’t stick around long enough to ever witness anything that went down with Brendon and me, but I did tell Jon to fuck off because of Brendon. Indirectly because of Brendon. Maybe directly, but I just didn’t know that yet. And when Canadian History split up and Jon and I were reunited, we never talked of Brendon or the Jackie tour again. Let the past be gone, we decided, clicked our glasses together and decided to start writing music together. He didn’t need much convincing. He had Ryan Ross on his doorstep. No, he needed very little convincing.

“Old habits die hard, right?” I ask quietly. They don’t die at all. “When we met again... before Christmas. It was...” I don’t even know how to finish the sentence I started. Magical. Legendary. Chemical. I had no choice.

“Who knows?” Jon asks. Too many people. Brendon would go ballistic if he knew because he’s always so damn worried about someone finding out. But most of my band does now, and my manager too. That’s three more people than should be allowed. “About your... preference, I mean,” he then clarifies.

“The men I’ve fucked?”

I’m crude on purpose. ‘Preference’. What a polite way to put it. He’s not thrown off by it, though, not calling me a fag to my face like Joe or Brent or even Jac did. He doesn’t even flinch. He just says, “I never would’ve guessed.”

“Rewind five years, and me neither.” Before Brendon. Before all of this. God, back then I was so damn sure of the things that were falling apart around me. “Look, you remember a few years back that anchorwoman who blew her brains out on TV?”

“Yeah, I remember reading about it.”

“I saw it.”

“Shit. You being serious?”

“Yeah. Even remember the exact day because it happened the morning after I... with Brendon. He was the first.” Somehow the information feels too personal to share, but I press on because that wasn’t my point. “And I – I don’t know. For a few weeks, I thought it was a sign from God or Allah or Krishna, fucking Zeus. That it was bad, the root of evil. That that part of me was evil. Maybe it is, come to think of it.” Brendon briefly crosses my mind. “But the thing is that it’s my decision. And nothing out there can judge me, only I can. Some – some fucking depressed lunatic woman killing herself on air has got nothing to do with me. There is no predestination. There’s just life. You can’t rationalise chaos, Jon. You _can’t_ make everyone happy, so you gotta choose. And I chose me.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

I laugh, fully realising that I’m trying to get drunk in a rental car because Brendon has chosen to keep up appearances. “The results vary.”

I suddenly remember a drunken memory, telling Jon that Brendon was a fag. A hotel corridor, maybe, and me talking bullshit as usual, and Jon just didn’t seem at all affected that Brendon was gay. Now that he knows the truth about me, he remains as calm as he did then. Fuck. Maybe I’ve met the only guy in the country who thinks it’s not his business who people sleep with.

“You should come back inside,” he says eventually. “Don’t want to look suspicious, right? And whatever you and Brendon... have. He looks at you differently. Than Shane, I mean.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” but I’m not sure if he’s just saying it for my sake. “And he’s going behind Shane’s back to be with you, so we can all come to our own conclusions from that, right? So you can stop moping about it.”

“Not moping,” I object, and I recall him talking about Cassie, and yeah. It’s like that. What I feel for Brendon. “You spend that much time with someone, it’s hard to function without them,” I reason, quoting him, and Jon chuckles. Brendon can’t refuse to share a bed without all of it coming out, without causing a scene. That’s all. Nothing more. “Thanks, Jon.”

“You’re welcome. But just... don’t include me? I don’t want to lie to people I care about.”

Neither do I, but it’s become second nature somehow. I barely even notice it anymore.

I promise to leave him out of it, anyway.

Still, when I finally go to bed hours later, alcohol pulsing in my stomach and the world bleary, lacking the clarity it had that morning, it occurs to me that it is different. It has changed.

I’m sick of sharing him.


	6. Baby, I Think I’ll Refrain

The usually silent studio receptionist looks like a frightened hare as she approaches our bar table. We don’t even notice her at first, me keeping my eye on the time, Patrick on the newspaper, and Jon on Patrick’s face. “Mr. Ross, sir,” she repeats, and it’s only then that we notice her. “She said it was urgent,” she explains and hands me a small note. It reads: ‘So what are we doing tonight? – Keltie’ “She’s been calling all day.”

“Okay,” I say and put the note in my pocket. The girl keeps waiting, but I don’t know for what. She clearly wants me to say something so that she can pass on a message. “I’ll call her?” I offer, and she visibly relaxes.

“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Ross.”

As she heads back out of the busy bar to get to the studio that’s just a few blocks down, I silently add that I’ll call Keltie when I get around to it. She’s been breathing down my neck all week, asking what plans we’ve got and what are we doing when. I’ve been living in the studio ever since we got back from Bismarck, recording songs with the snap of my fingers. I haven’t had much time for her, even less now that she’s moved back to her newly renovated apartment. It’s all shiny and brand new and it cost me a fortune, but she hasn’t been informed of that. I hardly saw her when we were unofficially living together, but she kept the place tidy and she cooked and she was nice to cuddle to at night, and it’s a shame that she’s gone now because my bed is cold without anyone next to me. Now we could migrate back to my place, which is closer to his work and Brooklyn, but my apartment has never been home. My apartment is a handful of rooms. The hotel room is ours.

The band and I have finished fifteen songs, all in two weeks. It’s like I’ve been possessed by a muse, it all pouring out, the band mesmerised by the way the music just suddenly comes together. The way it should have been in the first place. They’re all so fucking excited now. Vicky’s planning the big release, and the news of it is hitting the radios and the music magazines: he’s coming back. They’re holding their breaths.

Patrick is still reading the little clip in the arts section of The New York Times that’s about the band. It doesn’t even mention Patrick by name, but his eyes are still popping out in excitement. I know what it says: Ryan Ross, The Followers, the bus accident, been under the radar since, no new releases in three years, et cetera, et cetera. Long awaited return. A pioneer of music. Whoever wrote that clip clearly wants to fuck me.

“God, they’re really selling it,” Patrick says, now pushing the paper along the table back to Jon. “Oh god. Oh wow.” He looks stressed.

“If no one likes it, it’ll be my head they’ll chop off. Not yours,” I say kindly, and Patrick seems comforted by the knowledge.

“They’ll like it,” Jon says, now rereading the article, his eyes flying over the text. His mouth is twisting up at the corners. And of course they’ll like it. That’s not even an issue; it’s just a matter of how much.

A chorus of whistles and a few ‘Looking good, baby!’s attracts our attention, and the last chair gets pulled back. “Gentlemen,” Vicky says and sits down. “What are we thinking of the article?” She gets her cigarette holder from her bag and quickly has a lit cigarette attached to it. She leans back in the chair and orders herself red wine.

“We’re thinking it’s good,” Jon says, “but don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous to be promising release dates when we’re not done yet?”

She waves her hand dismissively. “Early summer, it said. Now that could be June or July. Either way, keep your calendars free for June. I envisage a warm up tour.” She sucks in cigarette smoke and blows it out, a perfect O rising into the air. “I’m going to get us on an airplane. Hit all the major cities: LA, Chicago, Toronto, Phoenix, Philly, San Fran, you say it, we’ll hit it. The arenas will be sold out. Just you wait. It’s all about marketing. After that, Europe.”

“No way,” Patrick breathes out, and Vicky is clearly thrilled to have an enthusiastic audience.

“Yes way.” She leans forward, eyes shining. “Paris. London. West Berlin. Rome! Copenhagen! Bombay!”

“Bombay’s not in Europe,” I note.

“Who the fuck cares? The world will be ours! And trust me, after that, even New York will feel small.” She smiles wickedly, wine in one hand, cigarette holder in the other, and it occurs to me that she’s living her dream. Good some of us are.

Quarter past. I should leave soon, and I tell my company as much. Vicky lifts a curious eyebrow. “You off to... you know?”

Vicky certainly hasn’t invented subtlety.

But yes, I am. She’s right. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of energy to get Brendon to meet me today. He’s impossible to get a hold of these days, but finally we found a time that suited us both. Vicky doesn’t seem to like Brendon much. Well, she tolerates him or, rather, the situation. She liked it even less when I gave her Brendon’s demos and told her to pass them along. Nepotism at its finest, but it’s Brendon. Last time I checked, I’d do anything for the man. This is next to nothing. Vicky was disgruntled but followed my orders, anyway. Now she keeps giving me these looks like it’ll all blow up in my face if we’re not careful. We’re being careful.

Her tone has attracted Jon’s attention, and I don’t necessarily want them realising that they both know, so I quickly say, “Yes. Appointment at the masseuse’s. Work these tensed muscles off.” I roll my shoulders for show.

I dig into my pocket for a small bottle, digging out two white pills and knocking them to the back of my throat. I wash them down with the last of my beer. Vicky’s staring at me. “What are those?”

“Vitamins. Took your advice on the healthy diet thing.” I get up and button up my jacket. “Don’t worry, doll,” I say, pressing a quick kiss to the top of Vicky’s head. She flicks the end of her cigarette holder, getting the ash to fall from the tip. “I’ll catch you later. I want to hear more about these tour plans.”

As I wave, I feel the pain in my left elbow again. Damn useless limb. The pain killers will kick in soon enough. Besides, right now I have other things to worry about.

* * *

He’ll be here. He’s just late.

He should have been here forty minutes ago, but there are plenty of factors I should take into account: traffic jams, broken down subway trains, losing his keys... Could be anything.

The hotel bed looks like it’s never been touched, the cleaners having made it immaculate once more. The rest of it, though, looks lived in: I’ve brought guitars and clothes over, and he’s got clothes here too, now, and the nightstand drawer has five opened lube bottles in it, and his shampoo bottle is in the bathroom next to his toothbrush, and for all intents and purposes, it’s a place for two people. But I’m just one.

He said he might not be able to make it, but he’d try. And if he couldn’t, he’d call. He’s just so busy, he claims. I’m busy too, but I make time for him. Hell, we’d see even four times a week at the start, but now it’s once in eight, nine days. Hasn’t he noticed that? Because I certainly have. And it’s me doing the begging. I’m very aware of that uncomfortable fact.

He hasn’t called, though, so he must be on his way. He’s just late. Again.

The few times we’ve gotten together since I got back from Bismarck, we’ve settled in here. Our time together has been empyrean: sex in the shower, expensive room service snacks, quick naps after sex... his smile. But he’s always late and he always leaves too soon.

I had an epiphany in Bismarck: we got nearly twenty hours of exclusive time. We... have never had that before. We have never been alone for that long. And although I had it for such a short time, it was long enough for me to realise that it’s what I wanted. I was happier in those twenty hours than I have been in twenty-six years, and now it all feels so hollow when he isn’t here. I don’t know how to tell him that. I’ve kept hoping that he can sense it too somehow, but if he could, wouldn’t he be here already?

These rooms mean nothing without him.

I wander back out to the living room, the wine glass in my grip. Brendon’s armchair is empty, so I sit in it, watching out of the window. I wonder what his favourite feature of our view is, if he has a favourite building. I loosen my tie and hold back sighs that won’t make a difference. Why is this starting to feel hauntingly familiar?

He’s fifty minutes late when I hear the doorknob being turned and the key getting pushed in. I don’t get up from my chair, just look to the doorway, and then he steps in, cheeks flushed like he’s been running.

“You’re still here,” he says, breathing heavily. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

“Still here,” I say, but now we’ve got an hour, and not two hours, because he has to be somewhere again. He always has to be somewhere. I’ve been living at the studio, but when I’ve left the building, I’ve been with him. I’ve occasionally gone home for fresh clothes and notes from Keltie, like ‘Where are you?’ and ‘Call me at work’ and ‘I miss you’.

Brendon is quick to take his jacket off, but he doesn’t stop there, instantly removing his t-shirt, too. “Sorry about that,” he says, a dirty sway to his hips as he makes his way over, and it’s nothing. He drops his shirt on the couch casually, his bared upper body inviting, warm, soft, and it’s nothing.

It’s everything.

He straddles me on the wide armchair, his ass resting on my thighs. He takes my wine glass and finishes it in one go, the wine leaving a hint of dark red on his lower lip. My forefinger slides down his chest slowly, stopping where his ribs end. “Where were you?”

“Stuck on the phone with William. He needed to rant about Carl. They’re not doing so well.”

“Not all couples are meant to be.”

He shrugs, hooking a finger under my chin and tilting my lips upwards. “Guess not,” he says and presses our lips together. When I don’t kiss him back, he pulls back with a frown. “You alright?” he asks, his hand soothingly carding through my hair.

“Yeah. Sure. I guess I just – I don’t know. Thought you were with Shane.”

“He’s at work,” he says in this tone like I should know that, and maybe I should, maybe he mentioned it, but plans change. “And right now I’m here with you, alright?” His voice is soft and gentle, and he kisses me on the lips. “Don’t think about him. Three’s a crowd.”

Yeah. It really fucking is.

“I should’ve called the hotel that I’d be late. Sorry. Come on, let me apologise,” he purrs, coaxing my mouth until I open up for him, and he kisses me deep. I try not to feel cheated that we only get half of the time we were meant to get, that it’s taken us days to arrange this. It’s getting more and more difficult to see him.

He’s unbuttoning my shirt, pushing it off my chest. “I’ll blow you,” he says, sounding turned on by the mere thought of it. I am too, of course I am, and I try to push it out of my mind, the other guy, and I try not to feel like he’s trying to bribe me. Of course he isn’t. He isn’t.

He moves down to sit on the floor in front of me, unbuckling my belt and kissing my lower stomach, and he’ll look so beautiful on his knees for me, he’ll look perfect, and I’ll close my eyes, lean back, keep my hands in his hair, letting him get me off with his mouth. But with his mouth occupied, we won’t be able to talk, and – and right now I have things to say.

“So I was thinking I could take a day off next week. You say which one and we’ll meet up here. Breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed.”

“Ryan,” he says, looking up from where he’s sitting between my parted legs. He stares at me incredulously. “I can’t disappear for an entire day.”

“Since when?”

“Since never. I’m juggling three jobs here, and the documentary is taking up a lot more time now, and the promotion company is organising the dressing rooms for Led Zeppelin, and I’ve given the club my notice but I’m not quitting for another few weeks, and I would _really_ like to just not think about that and suck you off instead.”

My hands are in his soft hair. I cup his cheek, genuinely amused. “You don’t _have_ to work, you know.” He rolls his eyes at my words like I’ve said something stupid again, and he’ll probably start saying that I’ve lost touch with the real world. “Quit all of your damn jobs, I’ll give you the money, and then you can take days off.”

“Maybe I want to work,” he says, but come on. Anyone would choose a life of luxury over hard labour.

“Oh, I’d still make you work,” I say with a wiggle of my eyebrows, but he doesn’t laugh and tell me how wonderful I am. Instead he stands up, shaking his head like he’s pissed off. What did I do?

“You never change,” he says in this tone that I’ve heard far too often in the past, and I suddenly know where this is going because we’ve done it before: I’ll say he’s stubborn, he’ll call me an asshole, and then we’ll fight for no reason and feel like shit for no reason until we will eventually make up, yet another scar added onto our relationship. But I’m done with that. If he wants to hate me for caring about him, then fine. Fucking fine. If he wants to slave away because it protects his pride, makes him a self-sufficient young man of his own means, then fine. If that’s so important to him.

I don’t want to fight with him.

“I just want to see you more often. Is that a crime?”

“No. Of course not.” He sighs dramatically. “You could just give me a bit of space.”

“Space?” I echo, and when he nods to confirm it, I feel lost. Space? He wants space? My mind can’t wrap itself around it. I don’t want space. It’s the opposite of what I want. When did he decide on this?

“Not like a lot of space,” he then amends. “Just... I just need this to be less intense.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I clear my throat and start buttoning my shirt again. Less intense. Alright. I see. Didn’t know I was being too intense for him.

“Hey, don’t do that,” he objects, now moving back to straddle me. “We talk too much. Come on, been looking forward to this for days.” His words have turned from sour to sweet, and then he’s kissing me again, moving closer, almost burrowing himself into me, and my arms wrap around his waist and hold him close. More space. Less intense. How is this either of those things?

“Want you to fuck me,” he says, his mouth moving to my neck, and my eyes fix on the ceiling. My cock responds, of course it does, and I’ll fuck him and love it, of course I will, but I can’t shut off my brain. Something about this isn’t right.

“It just gets a bit confusing sometimes, you know?” I ask, recalling him telling me that a few months back. It just gets a bit confusing, knowing where the lines are, how the spheres overlap. It’s fucking confusing.

“Don’t see what’s confusing about it,” he says, and the most sickening part is that I don’t even know when I missed out on that window of opportunity with him. I just suddenly realise that I have.

* * *

I slam the door shut, throwing my keys towards the side table, but they end up on the floor, anyway. I’m punishing my apartment for no apparent reason, kicking my shoes off on my way to the living room. My hair is wet from the shower I took at the hotel, and usually I don’t shower because I like smelling him on me, smelling of sex, I fucking get off on it, but now I wanted to feel clean.

I empty my pockets of the crap in them, noticing the small note written by the receptionist at the studio, and yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it.

I grab a guitar and hide in the music room, not looking at the piano because his ghost is there playing Chopin, back bare, sheets pooled around his waist, looking otherworldly, and he didn’t want space then. He didn’t want less intensity either. He wanted me.

What changed? Maybe I... Maybe I fucked it all up. In Bismarck.

“Don’t be paranoid,” I mutter to myself, leaning over the guitar to reach the notepad on the coffee table. “You’ve still got him.” I scribble down lyrics and go back to trying to compose this damn tune that’s been stuck in my head for the past twenty minutes.

He’s just stressed. He said it himself: three jobs. A boyfriend and a lover. Hell, that’d keep anyone swamped, and he’s just tired, exhausting himself. That’s all it is. And he tells me to back off because he wants to make it on his own. Okay. That’s all it is.

I consider calling Jon and talking to him about it because he is the only person in this world who I can talk about it to, but he made it clear that he doesn’t want to know. Keltie would have some amazing advice. She’s damn smart about these things. I should ask her without actually asking her.

I don’t ever remember feeling this goddamn emotionally drained.

The phone is ringing back out in the living room, but I choose not to react to it. All I know is that it’s getting darker outside and that the empty beer bottles keep lining up, and then I’ll go to bed at six in the morning, having started some new song ideas, hiding from the world once again. Some rock stars are social whores. Some are even more famous because they try to be unattainable. Chasing the dream, chasing someone on another plane of existence. Vicky spends half her time telling everyone that no, Mr. Ross will not be attending, thank you for the invite. She did try telling me to go to that opening night of some new club, Studio something, but I don’t enjoy mingling with famous people. What do we have in common except for our fame? Our arrogance that’s come along with it. Well, that’s a hoot.

“Hey.”

I nearly jump up as my heart skips three beats. “Jesus fucking Christ!” I clutch the guitar to my chest, seeing Keltie walking into the music room. She’s got her keys in hand. I forgot she didn’t return those yet. “Fuck, you scared me,” I say as she looks at the table of bottles and notes. She’s wearing one of her favourite dresses, an elegant, black maxi dress, and her hair’s up in a bun. I study her further: favourite red high heels, her expensive clutch, her best jewellery... She’s dressed up like she’s going to a ball, and she’s absolutely fucking stunning.

“Where are you going?” I ask her, my eyes finally locking with hers.

“You tell me,” she says, and her voice wavers slightly. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days. Even came by this morning, but –”

“Yeah, I passed out at Gabe’s.” Not even a lie.

“Of course you did.” There’s a strain to her words. I don’t follow. Seconds tick by with her waiting for something, but when it doesn’t happen, she says, “God, Ryan! I’ve been – been sitting next to my phone all day! I thought – I just thought you were making a show of it, wanting to rile me up, and I sat there in my best clothes waiting for a limo that never arrived! I was so convinced that you were just messing around with me, that you’d come in and sweep me off my feet! I thought, ‘He couldn’t have forgotten, I’ve been dropping hints for weeks now!’ For _weeks_ , Ryan!”

“It’s not your birthday,” I say knowledgeably because it’s not.

“No! It’s our anniversary!” she cries out and then spins around, a hand lifting to her face as she attempts to compose herself. I stare. It is? It is. We got together late March last year, it’s late March now... which would suggest that a year has passed and that we have something annual to celebrate. “You forgot,” she laughs bitterly out into the room. “God, should’ve known you’re lost in your own head again. Always the goddamned music!”

“I’ve been recording my new album!” I argue, finally putting the guitar aside and standing up. She’s pissed off, that’s more than obvious – hell, she just swore, and she’s not the swearing kind.

“I know that! I know.” She faces me again, apparently having managed to calm down a little. “I’m just tired of you putting us in second place all the time. I hardly ever see you. Might as well be single.”

I stare at her in disbelief. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No! God no! You’re not listening to me!”

I’m hearing her alright, but I just don’t understand what she’s saying. So I forgot our anniversary and, funnily enough, spent my free time today having sex with my gay lover in our Chelsea Hotel tryst. She knows none of this. She’s beautiful even in her distress, and something like guilt washes over me. I don’t mean to upset her. I don’t mean to make her sad, but how can I fix this when she’s being cryptic in typical female fashion? She says she’s tired of me yet here she is. She says she wants to be single but isn’t breaking up with me.

“Look, it’s only... a bit after midnight?” I hazard a guess. “Come on, I’ll take you out.”

“It’s too late for that!”

“Then what the hell do you want?!” I snap, not meaning to, regretting it when she looks like I’ve just slapped her. I’ve had an awful day, I want to tell her, that Brendon is pushing me away and I don’t know why. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, but I’ve clearly stirred up a storm as her eyes flash angrily in a way I’ve never seen before.

“Where is this relationship going, Ryan?” she asks, and oh god, there’s a conversation I don’t want to have. “You have to take responsibility! You can’t be passive, just going with the flow! There are two people in this: you and me. And I feel like – like I’m giving so much. So _much_ , Ryan! What are you doing?”

“Getting lectured at?” I suggest, which is the wrong thing to say, and god, why don’t I just shut the fuck up sometimes? She turns on her heel and walks out of the room, and I follow like a dog that knows it’s upset its owner, saying, “Baby, come on, I didn’t mean that!”

“You did! And that’s the problem!”

She doesn’t stop at the front door to give me a chance to ask her to stay, which she then would, and we could make up, and I swear I’d fuck her with thought put into it this time because it _is_ our anniversary, and I have not been this long with anyone in my life. Except Jac. Sure. And Brendon if we could count the time spent apart, which we can’t, but I’ve carried him around for nearly three years. Brendon disqualifies, Jac was... Jac was Jac, but Keltie. She’s the kind of girl you marry. She knows this. I pretend not to know this. And she storms out of my apartment, not stopping for the courteous pause at the door to let me change her mind, and instead I end up following her down the stairs as her high heels click against the steps and my bare feet follow.

“Don’t be so dramatic!” I tell her on the landing on the fifth floor, but she takes no notice of me. “Keltie, are you honestly making me follow you out into the street? Jesus Christ! It’s not like a single day measures up our relationship!”

For once, Shane had a point.

Keltie comes to an abrupt stop and swirls around, her brown eyes boring holes into me. “It does! Right now, it really does! You don’t take me seriously at all, do you? You just take me for granted! God, they’re right, they’re –”

“Who’s they?” I ask, descending a few steps. “Oh, let me guess! Your Rockette friends, right? Suzanne, Megan and Poppy? You all gather round, do you, and talk about me? Is that what you do?” She doesn’t reply, which is as much of a reply as I need. “God, I don’t need you gossiping all over fucking New York about me! Shit, Vicky would get pissed if she knew that –”

“Oh, Vicky! Now there’s a girl you do spend time with! She doesn’t have to stand around waiting for your calls, she –”

“Would you get over Vicky already?! It’s like you want me to sleep with her! I mean, if that’s it, let me know! I’m sure she’d be up for it!”

Her jaw line’s been drawn tight, her mouth twitching as her eyes are brimmed by unshed tears, but no, I am done with this. If we don’t evolve, we die. It’s true for us, and it’s true for Brendon and me, and Keltie really needs to let go of these ancient insecurities. “How can you say that to me?” she asks.

“It’s easy when all I hear is bullshit.”

“I...” Her voice fades, and she descends a few steps, looking horrified. She opens up her clutch bag, going through the contents quickly. “Here. I don’t want to carry this around anymore.” She throws a silver plectrum at my feet. It’s not one of mine. “It’s made from a meteorite. Throw it out, do whatever you will, I don’t even care.” She keeps going down the stairs, but I don’t go after her. Instead I sit down on the steps, head between my hands, a sudden headache taunting me.

The pick lies a step down from me, a round cornered triangle. It’s engraved ‘R+K’, and I wonder when she got it done. Weeks ago, knowing her. She’s always on top of these things.

I’m just tearing everything apart.

* * *

For Brooklyn standards, it’s not bad. I never really envisioned it much, I just assumed that the place would look ratty and poor, not nice like this. It’s modest looking, a simple red-bricked building with a lot of straight lines and medium-sized rectangular windows. I’m so caught up in staring at it, of visualising the life it contains, that life I’ve never seen, that I almost miss my chance of an old woman coming out of the door. I hurry to hold the door open for her, and she says, “Thank you, dear,” takes one look at me, seems frightened, and hurries down the steps while I slip in.

I probably look like a mess. I haven’t slept. Bet Keltie’s crying on the phone to Poppy about how shit I am. But the hours haven’t been in vain because I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking a lot, and one phone call later, here I am: 128 Montague Street.

The staircase is narrow and the paint is peeling, and I walk up to the second floor, keeping my eyes on the door numbers. I hesitate before knocking. Ask myself if I really want to do this, but then it occurs to me that it doesn’t matter. I haven’t been sure of anything in years, but I’ve managed to survive.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Wait. Hold breath. Goddammit. Knock, knock, _knock knock knock knock_.

“Hold your damn horses!” a voice yells from the other side, but I’m just that annoyingly gone where I act on my impulses, yet I know that I could stop myself if I put my mind to it, and no, I will not hold my horses. Figuratively. Because I have none. Horses, that is.

When Brendon opens the door, he isn’t expecting it to be me. A neighbour, maybe, or the mailman or, I don’t know, someone _not_ me. He’s in a pair of dark blue pyjama pants, nothing else although it’s nearing eleven o’clock and respectable people are dressed by now, and he looks so... homey. The fabric is faded and fluffy, and he looks like he was watching some TV or maybe was doing the dishes or something utterly domestic that I can’t for the life of me imagine him doing. We stare at each other, me in fascination, him mostly in shock.

He says, “How do you know where I live?” Not even, ‘What are you doing here?’

“Vicky,” I explain, but he still seems just as stunned. “‘You want to come in, Ryan?’ Don’t mind if I do! Thanks.” I push past him, knowing that Shane isn’t home. I know this because he was in a meeting with Vicky when I called.

And then I’m there. His home. Their home.

It looks like two guys with on and off jobs live in it. It’s messy and it’s cluttered, and it – it’s got such a lived in feel to it. Shane’s artwork is all over the living room walls, sometimes in frames, sometimes just stuck to it with a few pins. Film rolls are piled up on a side table next to a camera that’s next to a framed photograph of Shane and Brendon, arms on each other’s shoulders, smiling at the camera, the background – looks like the Golden Gate Bridge, _is_ the Golden Gate Bridge. Piles of laundry have taken over the green couch, waiting to be put away, and the furniture looks worn down and old, and Brendon’s guitars and bass are in the corner next to an amp, and a pile of vinyl is on the floor, and the place is clearly too small for them. But it’s inevitably theirs. They walk through that door and exhale in relief of being back home.

“I could do with a drink,” I say, but Brendon looks at me cautiously, folding his arms over his bare chest. He looks gorgeous. “Kitchen this way?” I walk through the open door to the narrow kitchen, no room for a dining table anywhere, it seems, and open the fridge and help myself to a beer that’s next to a half-eaten block of cheese. I had all these grand speeches stuck in my head on the subway, and now I’ve forgotten all of them.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, leaning against the kitchen doorway. His pyjama pants are low on his waist, I can see the start of his pubic hair, and god, it’s distracting.

“Am I not welcome?” I take a sip. “Is my presence here making you feel uncomfortable?” A note pad lying on the kitchen counter, Brendon’s handwriting ‘Shane – your mother called, wants us to come visit her this summer?’ “Did I need to be invited here?” I ask, my mind reeling over the thought of Shane’s mother even knowing what homosexuality is.

“You came barging in here! You look like hell, what are – Shit.” He sounds like he’s only now getting it. “Has something happened? Is your dad okay?”

“My dad...? Fuck, he’s fine. I’ve just. I’ve been thinking. Ever since yesterday, been thinking about all this space and intensity, and Keltie had some smart things to say about relationships, she –”

“Keltie?”

“Yeah, she’s a damn smart girl. Especially when she’s mad.”

“Oh my god, you told her.” He’s gone visibly pale. He looks nauseous.

“I didn’t fucking tell her.” I finish half the bottle with the second sip.

“You guys had a fight?” he then asks, and we did, yes, I made her feel like shit, I ruined her day, week, life, I’m no good, I’m scum, she deserves great things, that girl, and does Brendon expect me to talk to him about this? About my guilt and how shitty I feel right now?

“This isn’t about us, I mean Keltie and me us. It’s about _us_. Because I’ve been thinking,” I declare once more, trying to gather my thoughts, or rather Keltie’s thoughts. “There are two people involved in this relationship: you and me. And what are you contributing to this? I feel like I’m doing all the work here. That’s what I _feel_ like, and it gets better: I know what I want. Or what I don’t. I don’t want space and I don’t want it to be less intense, and I can’t understand why you do. Now it’s your turn. Go.” I put the bottle down on the counter and stare at him expectantly. He looks like he certainly didn’t expect this.

When it’s clear that I’m not getting an answer, I walk past him because I’m not done looking around yet. The room next to the kitchen is the second bedroom, the one Brendon proudly informed me that they don’t even use, but they need as a cover. Can’t have the landlord knowing they’re two fags. Well, no. This area didn’t look like his precious Castro with rainbow flags at shop fronts. This is a respectable neighbourhood. The bed in the second bedroom is hidden by all the boxes on it: it’s a storage room more than anything else.

“How about we talk about this when you’re not drunk?” he suggests, following me like a hawk. Probably worries that I’ll start breaking shit.

“Good guess, but I’m not drunk.” I’m not. I haven’t had anything to drink, and if I’m a mess, then it’s him and my thoughts and Keltie, all messing me up.

I cross the living room and – jackpot. Their bedroom. I stand in the doorway, taking in the messed up sheets on the bed that looks more than slept in. Oh, it’s been put to use alright. It’s the only room that looks organised, the sheets matching the curtains, books on the nightstand, a few candles there, even. I see them lying on that bed, naked, kissing and laughing, and I had to see it for myself. Had to come all the way here to see it. And the smell. Fuck, the _smell_. “Oh god,” I laugh mostly out of desperation. Oh god, why did I come here?

“What?” he asks, now sounding nervous. He reaches for the doorknob and closes the door like he doesn’t want me there. Like that part isn’t meant for me. I’ve dragged him through all of my sheets. We’ve made my bed a playground. I let him in.

I pull him into my arms, hugging him tight, and he doesn’t respond because he’s not expecting it, but he eventually hugs back, all muscles tense like he doesn’t trust me right now. I breathe him in. No, I fucking sniff him, like a dog, nose against his neck, down his shoulder, to his armpit, and don’t tell me this, don’t fucking kid me right now.

My hand slides down to his lower back and, without an invitation, slips inside his pyjama pants. And it’s familiar by now, nothing strange in me sliding my fingers between his cheeks, but it’s not to tease him and it’s not done slowly, but to get a quick brush of my fingers against his hole before he manages to stop me. His breathing hitches. He steps back, my hand slipping out. My fingers are wet. I squeeze his hip with my other hand, say, “You’re kidding me. You’ve got to be kidding me.” And then I let go, step back, mind spinning, wiping my fingers against my pants. “When’d he fuck you? This morning?” The sheets and the smell, recently, definitely. “Right. Of course. You’re always horny in the mornings, aren’t you?” The venom in my words is deliberate. He catches it easily enough.

“Don’t be a dick, Ryan.”

“I could note the various ironies in that particular sentence, but baby, I think I’ll refrain.” It’s like an out of body experience where I’m me but I’m not me. I know it’s going to hit me any second now, any second, so I try to stick to the complete and utter incomprehension for as long as I can. “Should I volunteer for sloppy seconds?” I loosen my tie. “Or was he the sloppy second? Because I did fuck you yesterday and I did make you come. You can’t fake it. That’s the glory of fucking men.”

“Unbelievable,” he mutters. “You come here uninvited, to my _home_ , and then you pull this shit on me? Your mother really could’ve taught you some manners before bailing out on you.”

I want to say, ‘Your dad really could’ve taught you how to not be a faggot before breaking your arm’, because if he wants to go down that road, then I will. Oh, how I will. But before I can astound him with my amazing comebacks of highly intellectual content, he says, “You think Shane and I never fuck anymore?” He sounds disbelieving.

I was under the impression that they don’t. Anniversary sex aside, no. Of course they don’t.

But they do. God, he stinks of Shane. Hasn’t even showered. There he is, standing right there, with Shane’s load up his ass, probably feeling all nice and warm and fuzzy about it, the way I felt after he fucked me, that stupid fucking feeling of contentment. “Did you enjoy it?” I ask, and calm fury is appearing on his features. I’ll match his fury and raise him betrayal. What does he want me to say? That it hurts? That now my mind is full of these- these fucking visuals, and I can hardly breathe? “Well?! Did he make you come? Did he? Did you get off?!” He says nothing. I take two steps closer, and yeah, it’s hitting home now, the fact of what he’s done is settling in. “Did you suck his cock?” I stress every syllable. He bends. He breaks.

“Yes!” he barks angrily. “I let him fuck my mouth and then my ass, and I fucking loved it. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Shut up! You stupid fucking asshole! Are you trying to make me go punch his lights out?!”

“Punch him...?” he repeats, clearly lost. He laughs. It’s a cold laugh that sends shivers down my spine. “Ryan.” Condescending as ever. “He’s my _boyfriend_.”

“And what am I? What exactly am I?!” I yell, demanding to know, but he doesn’t have the answer. Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t think about us. But I do. I have been. Keltie, she’s got some real insight, she does. I pace back and forth in their small living room, and something stronger than anger is coursing through my veins, sucking the sunlight out of the day until it’s all black. “I don’t want him touching you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t want him touching you!”

“Are you at _all_ aware of how psychotic you sound right now?!”

I come to a stop. “You think I’m being unreasonable?”

Nothing is more reasonable. He’s mine. He belongs to me, his kisses, his laughter, his smiles, and I’m not sharing.

“Ryan! You’ve – You’ve watched another guy fuck me!” he exclaims in exasperation. “Remember, in LA? You didn’t mind _him_ touching me. You fucking loved it, and I loved you watching!”

“So we once had a threesome. What’s your _fucking_ point?!”

“That we have _never_ been exclusive, you and I!”

And that’s my fault. Probably. For a while on tour, he was only sleeping with me. Pretty sure that he was, and he probably would have been happy only sleeping with me, but I couldn’t – commit. I couldn’t let myself think of him in those terms, but that was almost three damn years ago now. We had a threesome. Okay. I have good memories of it. Standard jerk off material. But that was before, and if he thinks for a second I’d ever invite someone into bed with us again, he’s wrong. I was stupid, is that what he wants me to say? That I was stupid that summer, made some mistakes?

He has managed to halt my attack momentarily, long enough for him to aim his archers at me and tell them to fire. He says, “And what about Keltie? Don’t you fuck her?”

Should’ve seen that one coming.

“Don’t bring her into this.”

“Girls don’t count?” he laughs angrily. “Fuck you! Sex is sex.”

“You know nothing about Keltie and you know nothing about us! So shut up because that’s different! Her and the LA kid, that’s all different!”

“How?!”

“Because I say so!”

And they’re different from him sleeping with Shane. LA kid, barely remember what he looked like. He never mattered. We used the kid. Brendon wasn’t playing house with him, Brendon wasn’t sharing his bed with him, Brendon wasn’t smiling in pictures with him. That kid was insignificant, and Shane is not. Shane matters to Brendon. This life. This other life he’s got, the Ryanless one, matters to him a fucking lot. And that’s why he wants space. Wants it to be less intense. That’s why he’s avoiding me: because he’s clinging onto this.

It’s a bit too late for him to change his mind. He can’t go back and forth on this no-man’s-land. He can’t give himself to me and then share himself with others. It’s not his decision to make. He isn’t allowed to have that kind of intimacy with others. It ridicules what we have. It tears me apart. He should know that.

“I don’t want anyone else touching you. Just me. You’re reserved for me.”

His stare is icy. “You can’t order me around.”

“You so sure about that?”

“You’re so fucked up,” he says disbelievingly, like he didn’t realise this is who I am. “Maybe you should go.”

“But you don’t want me to go. You want me to fuck you.” He looks insulted, but I unbutton my jacket slowly. “You’re always up for a second round, Brendon. We know that. Don’t tell me he fucked you twice because I won’t buy it.”

“Time you leave,” he says, marching over and grabbing my arm, pulling me, and it’s history repeating itself, him throwing me out of his kingdom, like none of it matters to him. These past few months. But it’s not my fault this time, it can’t be.

I take hold of his shoulders, forcing him to face me, and I kiss him, pulling his half-dressed body to me. He tries to push me back, but he can’t do it because he doesn’t really want to push me back. He bites on my tongue, though, and my mouth retreats. “Son of a –”

“Let go of –”

I kiss him again, don’t care that it stings, force him to open up for me. His hands are on my hips, trying to push me off, but I press him against the wall, the picture frames shaking. I push one hand into the back of his pants again, at an awkward angle, my wrist protesting, but I get my fingers between his cheeks, and I get two fingers into his stretched hole. He comes to a complete still, his breath quickening. I kiss him again, and he doesn’t fight back now, just stands still, and I work my fingers in deeper, becoming coated in Shane’s semen. Brendon’s hole is so slick. Shane had fun.

My tongue pushes against his, and I keep at it until he shudders and his body presses against mine. He kisses me back, groaning at the back of his throat. It’s almost too easy.

“You’d love for me to fuck you right now,” I tell him, our mouths pressing together. I feel his entire body yearning for it. It’s too easy to flick that switch inside him. He’s breathing hard, his hands pulling on my shirt, trying to tuck it out of my pants. Our bruised lips press together. A bit of yelling, an adrenalin rush... “You’d love for me to fuck your tight, come-filled hole. You’d get off on it.” My hand pulls back from his hole, my fingertips running up his vertebrae. “I’d drag you to your bed, yours and Shane’s, and fuck you there until the bed broke. You’d be on your hands and knees, the picture of you and Shane on the nightstand watching you get fucked so hard. Would you let me? Huh? Come on, would you let me?”

My lips hover over his, and I stare into his lust-filled eyes. His cheeks are rosy, and his body is thrumming. He’s hard, I feel it against me. Humiliation, anger, I see it all there in his eyes, but it loses to desire. He breathes out, “Yes.”

Yes. Of course it’s a yes.

I take a hold of his shoulders once more, my forehead pressed to his. “See, the thing is, Brendon... the thing is. That the thought alone repulses me.” I step back, my eyes darting to the closed bedroom door. Their bed.

Nothing is holy to him. He’s trying to salvage whatever he has with Shane, and what for? What does any of it even mean to him?

“You said you wanted space, and all it takes to get you on your knees for me is a little bit of dirty talk? Fuck,” I laugh, shaking my head. “You tell me who’s fucked up. You tell me that.” I try to breathe, but it hurts. My eyes fly over his form, his erection that’s visible at the front of his pants, his reddened cheeks and swollen lips. He’ll never stop being beautiful to me, but it’s more than obvious that he doesn’t realise that. And he’s ashamed. Ashamed of this. “God, take a look at yourself,” I whisper. Spoiled goods. Too spoiled even for me.

Unlike Keltie, I have enough theatrical flair to stop at the door. He’s still pressed to the wall, heaving, staring at me with wide eyes.

“I meant what I –” My throat closes off. Suddenly, the memory makes me feel humiliated. I don’t know what I was thinking. God, what _was_ I thinking? “I meant what I said. In Bismarck. It’s taken me all this time to realise you’re pretending it never even happened. Fuck, that’s... that’s just great,” I laugh, my voice breaking. My chest feels hollow, and I hang my head in shame of myself. He probably wishes that I had kept my mouth shut, blurting out something so stupid. “Enjoy your space.”

I don’t bother closing their door as I walk out, leaving him to his game of playing everyone around him. He’s a walking disaster, probably clueless as to what the hell he even wants, but I still know that what we’ve got is too good to lose or to cheapen, something too good for a dirty affair, and if he – if he doesn’t realise that... If he doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want what I’ve been offering like a fucking idiot.

He doesn’t come after me. Of course not.

Outside, the spring sun shines bright. I stand on my own two feet and try to remember who the hell I am without him.


	7. A Thing of Beauty/Slip Away

The café owner never tries to make any money off of me. When I walk in, shoulders hunched, head hung low, she just greets me, tells the waitress to bring me some black coffee, and motions me to the table in the corner that she knows I like the best. I can see out into the street, but people can’t see me. The place is only two blocks from my place, at the heart of the neighbourhoods where I tend to make myself known, but the café’s under the radar. It’s not a place you’d find Gabe having a hangover cure in, or any of the rockers or artists around these parts because the place isn’t romantic. It’s sandwiched between a shoe store and a rare coins shop that I’ve never seen anyone in, and I haven’t brought Keltie here or Gabe or Jon or Eric, not even Brendon. It’s my own place. It’s got an old soul.

It was a damn smart move for me to keep one place to myself. Keep one plain corner table with a wobbly chair to myself.

I place my hat on the table. Remove my sunglasses. The girl brings me coffee. She doesn’t look at me and she doesn’t ask questions, and I get out my notebook.

“How’s the album going, Ryan?”

I look up towards the counter where Eleanor is looking at me with a motherly smile. “It’s going well, El. It’s done.”

“You don’t say.” She scratches her greying head, her wedding ring still on her finger. Her husband died last year. Cancer, I think. “I’ll be buying it.”

“I’ll send you a copy.” She looks like she’s about to protest, so I say, “Don’t even try to argue with me. I’ll sign it for you. It might even be worth some money one day.”

She nods, a small smile stretching on her face. “Well, thank you, Ryan. That’d be sweet of you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I say and start working on the snippets of lyrics that have been circling in my head the past few days. I don’t know what they’re for because it’s like I said: the album is done. We finished the last song last night, and the official party is taking place tomorrow. I’ve worked out the track list. I’ve given it a title. The guys are excited, the label even more so: they sent me a fruit basket.

I’m so tired of life.

The black ink swirls on the white page, my eyes following the loops and the curves. It’s a sunny day, of course, just to let me know that I don’t have the right to be miserable. And spring is time for lovers. Yeah, what lovers? Keltie isn’t taking my calls, and I’m not taking Brendon’s. Lovers. I sent Keltie flowers, too, but she never called to thank me. And now I walk around SoHo, sunglasses and hat, seeing lovers holding hands, arms around each other’s waists, laughing into each other’s necks. They always come out during spring. It’s a seasonal thing. Turn, turn, turn.

The coffee is bitter and too hot, burning my tongue, but I don’t mind. The white porcelain is almost too hot to hold. I feel the odd shape of the Chelsea Hotel key ring in my pocket, and I don’t know why I carry it around. Right now, that temporary haven is the last place where I want to be.

I did a foolish thing.

I write down a few more lines, and they all seem like they don’t connect, but they do, or they will. It’s like I’m looking at the pages with a magnifying glass, missing the bigger picture.

At least he has called, but I told him that it wasn’t a good time and that I was going out, and then eventually I just hung up on him. He hasn’t called since. I couldn’t deduce anything from the sound of his voice: was he going to tell me that I’m an asshole or that he was sorry? I don’t know. Maybe even he doesn’t. Maybe I said some stupid things, or I represented my feelings in an idiotic fashion, but I meant what I said: I don’t want other people touching him. Not the way I touch him. And now I lie in bed at night, seeing him arch into the touch of anonymous men, and I’ve never felt whatever it makes me feel. A knife to my chest and dragged downwards as he succumbs in throes of passion across town. I’m on a quest to find some well-hidden piece of him from an infinite labyrinth full of dead ends. I’m blindfolded and desperate. I can’t seem to get a hold of him.

Eleanor’s got the radio on, and I feel mocked and ridiculed when that stupid number one hit from a few months back comes on. I heard it on the radio plenty then, but I never thought anything of it. Now a silent anger bubbles in me when the girl sings, “You mustn’t think you’ve failed me just because there’s someone else,” and she then proceeds to wail about how hard it is for her to be in love with two men. She’s an angel, though, this girl. She’s torn apart by it. I don’t know if Brendon’s sorry or angry, but he’s not torn. He said it himself: it’s not confusing to him.

I’d love to see inside his head, see how it operates. See what exactly he thinks of me, and what he thinks of Shane, and how exactly do those differ? But I can’t read his mind, and he will never tell me.

I can’t lose something I’ve never had. Can’t lose someone I never had.

I did such a foolish thing.

I keep thinking of that Auden poem, writing his words on the paper distractedly. Over and over again.

So I pity myself. Someone’s got to. Fuck, I used to be so much stronger than this. None of this would have affected me a year ago, six months ago. I need to put that armour back on, find that battered shield. It was potentially lethal to take it off.

“Ryan. Hey!”

I start, looking up from the page to see a man standing by my table. In my café. In this one place where I thought I’d be safe in this city of millions. My insides feel frozen. Fuck you, universe. Go on, ridicule me further then. Go on. Because here he is.

“Mind if I sit down?” Shane asks good-naturedly with that familiar nervous edge to his words. He’ll never get rid of all the amazement he feels at the sight of me.

I don’t want him to sit down. He can go home and obsessively listen to his Followers records and jerk off to the mental image of Joe Trohman on stage. He seems the type.

“Sure. Go ahead.” I push the other chair with my leg. Sit down, then. Mock me.

“What a coincidence running into you!” he laughs, taking a seat, placing a rolled up newspaper on the table, carefully lowering the camera bag that’s hanging from his shoulder. He sees me looking at it. “Just been taking some pictures here and there. Then it’s off for my last shift at Eric’s. Been working there since we moved to New York, so that’s kind of scary, but the documentary is a full-time project now.” I look at his mouth. Try to determine if he’s a good kisser. If it’s a sensual mouth or a soft mouth or – “What are you writing?”

I drop my gaze onto the page, sharing my table, my coffee, my notes with the other man. The legitimate one. “‘The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.’” I take another sip of my coffee, not looking at the mouth that kisses Brendon. “W.H. Auden.”

“I don’t recognise it. I don’t read much poetry.”

“I do.”

Something like embarrassment flickers on his face. Did he take Brendon slow or did he take Brendon hard? Does he make love or does he fuck? And how many times since then have they copulated? Brendon’s got an insatiable libido. Someone’s got to do the job.

The girl brings him coffee, and he seems unnerved now. “Is this a bad time?” He looks at my notes like the morbid tone has put him off. Yes, it is a bad time. We’re living in bad times, can’t he tell? Maybe he fucked Brendon last night. Maybe he hasn’t showered, maybe I should start sniffing him too, see if I can smell it. But I don’t want to know. God, if knowing turns me into this zombie I’ve been, going between rage and loss and anger and sorrow and confusion and pain and then rage again, then I’d rather not know.

I say, “I’m in love, and it’s not going so well.” I close the notebook and gaze out of the window.

A sympathetic, understanding expression takes over his features. “I, uh... I did hear something about you and Keltie going through a rough time.” He holds a pause so that I can comment if I want to. I don’t. He smiles even more sympathetically. “I’m sure she’ll come around, Ryan. I mean, all couples have their disagreements.”

“I suppose you’re right, but I just don’t see much of a future there right now.” I don’t even know who I’m talking about anymore, but the words still ring true. “Have you ever cheated on Brendon?”

And would he be stupid enough to tell me?

He looks surprised by the change of topic, his cheeks turning red like me asking something so personal has got him flustered. “No. No, of course not.”

“Because I thought gays slept around a lot.”

“Some do. Some of us want relationships. Want to settle down.” But Brendon’s too cute to settle down. Was three years ago, still is today. Shane brushes stray hairs behind his ear. “To be honest with you, Brendon and I had a bad winter. We barely saw each other. But, you know, when you love someone that much, you find them again. Life was less hectic when you guys were in Bismarck, and we got to spend time together again. Maybe you and Keltie need to do that too.”

He’s giving me relationship advice. Telling me where I went wrong: leaving. Leaving Brendon unguarded. While I was writing him songs, he slipped away from me. Is that what I’m supposed to conclude?

I close my eyes. I see Brendon there, night three of a New York without me. Thinking of me. Lying in bed, boxers on, staring at the ceiling, feeling lonely and restless, thoughts wandering to Bismarck and what I’m doing and if I’m missing him yet. Shane walks into the room, and they’re ready to go to bed, and Shane says how nice it’ll be that he can sleep in for once, and then Shane stops slightly, realising that he’s got a thing of beauty in his bed, or, no – No, maybe Brendon looks at Shane, thinks, ‘There’s a way not to feel lonely’, or maybe the two things happen simultaneously, and the first touch, well, it’s hesitant because it’s been a while, and they’re nervous, but then months of pent up passion or longing (on whose side?) gets unleashed, and it’s so hot to the touch. And the next night they do it again. And Brendon doesn’t have to miss me. He realises that he never really even did.

Maybe I had lost my chance before he ever even got to Bismarck.

“You know anything about tour rules?” I ask quietly. Shane shakes his head and looks intrigued. I get out a cigarette. Try to pull my way out of this quicksand. “I’ll tell you. Seeing as we’ll be hitting the road in a few months, you should know these things.” I go through my pockets, but he’s quick to get out matches and light one for me. I lean in, suck in smoke, blow it out from the corner of my mouth. He drops the match into the ashtray. “Thanks.” I rest my elbows on the table. “Firstly, drugs and alcohol are at everyone’s own discretion as long as, and I stress this, you’re still able to do your job. If you’re too fucked to do it, I’ll fire you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t –”

“I’m not saying you would. You just need to know this, and you need to let your crew know. You’re responsible for them.”

He nods, alert and listening. Docile like a dog. He’d probably even want to take notes.

It rarely happens that a crew member is too out of it to function, and we used to laugh it off if someone missed soundcheck because they were wandering along hotel corridors shitfaced, incoherently mumbling about walking in crystal forests of magic lights. It’s nice to have ideals, though. Something to aim for.

I don’t think of our _Jackie_ tour and me drinking too much and getting myself arrested and starting fights and stirring shit up. But that was another tour with a band that hated itself. I don’t want to go through that again.

“We’re a band on tour, so it’s perfectly okay for things to get wild, and they _will_ get wild, but just... keep your head on. Don’t OD. Don’t sleep with a minor. The basic shit.” He looks shocked. Clearly he hasn’t been in our circles long enough to get these basics covered. “There’ll be groupies, of course. It’s okay to bang them, that’s what they want. Use a condom, though, they’re not necessarily clean. Don’t believe them if they say they’ve got a diaphragm or that they’re on the pill, that’s the oldest trick in the book for them to knock themselves up.” I flick my cigarette over the ashtray. Keltie’s words come to mind, about me smoking when I’m nervous. Bullshit. There’s no link. “And significant others back home... are back home.” I let out a heavy sigh. “The oldest tour rule is that it’s not cheating when you fuck around on tour. You’re allowed to. And no one is stupid enough to say anything of it to whoever’s waiting for you back home.”

“Good thing Brendon’s coming on tour with us, then,” he laughs nervously, as an icebreaker. “Or that I’ll be on tour to keep my eye on him.” He’s trying to make it into a joke, but he’s right. If he wants to keep Brendon in his life, he needs to keep Brendon under constant surveillance.  
  
I stare at him calmly. “You think he’d cheat on you?”

He looks offended. He can’t be right for Brendon. He _can’t_ be if he can’t even see what’s right in front of his eyes: me. The way I look at Brendon. Jon said that it’s written all over my face, and Jon said that Brendon looks at me differently from Shane, and if Shane can’t see it by now, can’t sense the tension whenever Brendon and I are in the same room together, then he doesn’t know Brendon at all, can’t read him, or can read him even less than I do, and he doesn’t deserve Brendon, _he_ doesn’t deserve to be the guy who gets to take Brendon home.

I want to say, ‘Be offended, go on. Be offended. It’s nothing compared to the confusion and loss I feel.’

“Look, what I’m trying to say is that you’ll be walking around with that camera crew, and plenty of shit will happen that can’t be on that documentary, alright? Like the drugs. And the underage girls that Gabe will sleep with. You make sure that you don’t as much as accidentally film that.” He nods conscientiously, all serious like. “And Keltie isn’t coming on tour, she’s got her own show. But I care about her. I wouldn’t want to hurt her. And so, when you see me taking off with women, you make sure no one’s filming. I don’t want anyone asking stupid questions.” I scratch my neck, the words now forming in my head, and I take a drag of the cigarette and take a sip of the lukewarm coffee. This bit never gets easier. This bit makes my heart race like that of some tiny rodent every damn time. “And sometimes... sometimes, you’ll see me take off with men instead. And you don’t need to pay any attention to that either.”

Shane lets out a burst of laughter, eyes sparkling like I got him with that one. I stare at him blankly. I fuck men. I fuck his boyfriend.

“Oh, come on. April Fool’s Day was last week,” he says, smile lopsided. He seems touched that I decided homosexuality would make a good joke, like it’s a nod towards him. I take a long sip of my coffee and open my notebook again, finding a new page and scribbling down a few more lines that pop into my head. I feel his eyes on me, and I can see in my mind’s eye how his facial expression changes from amused to shocked, his pupils widening, his mouth maybe even dropping open. “You’re... you’re being serious.”

“You’re not a homophobic homo, are you?” I ask incredulously, quickly adding, “I’m not a fag. I just sleep with men too. I thought it’d be better for you to know. And on tour, well, plenty to choose from.” I feel nauseous. “I imagine I’ll be pretty busy.”

Faceless, nameless bodies, young women with tight pussies, virgin boys with tight asses. Bodies. Meat.

“I need a glass of water,” Shane announces, his face a sickly pale. He gets up quickly and hurries to the counter. Well, this is a new reaction.

I push all the whirlwind of regret and sorrow into that broken, pathetic part of me that’s spilling all over the pages of my notebook, and I try to focus here. Shane is my competition. He’s the enemy. If he weren’t around, messing it all up for me, Brendon would be mine already.

I can work with this. Turn Shane into a weapon. My next move. I used to be so good at this, but now I just mope around like that will somehow make me look like the better option. Shane thanks Eleanor for the glass of water, and I recompose myself and tell myself to man the fuck up, and by the time he sits down again, I feel... lighter. Calmer.

Colder.

“You alright, Valdes?” I ask, and he nods hurriedly, guzzling the water. “You seem a bit surprised.”

He laughs in a ‘oh fuck get me out of here’ way, trying to avoid eye contact. “Yeah, uh. I just. I never imagined that you might... I mean. You’re. Fuck, you’re Ryan Ross. You’re – you’re famous, everyone knows you, and you’d – you’d imagine that something like that couldn’t be kept. Secret. Or I mean. That there’d be rumours or... But fuck, I had no idea.”

I drop the stub of my cigarette into the rest of my coffee. It makes a hissing sound and sinks. That’s the point. That no one has any idea. I can’t go around admitting that I’ve, well, tried to suck cock.

Eleanor is leaning against the counter. Looks like she’s trying to do a crossword again. I need to come here more often. She hums to the tune on the radio, and I feel like I’m ten-years-old and Jackie’s asleep in my lap, whimpering in her dog dreams, and I can hear the humming from the kitchen where my grandmother who is not my grandmother is doing the dishes, and I try to memorise that seven times eight is fifty-six. That’s why I come to this café. For the split moments that this woman’s presence reminds me of someone else’s.

Shane Valdes looks like he has never been more shocked in his life.

“I’m discreet. That’s what it’s all about,” I say. “So don’t tell anyone about this, alright?”

“Yeah. Of course not.”

“I mean it. No one.”

He nods hurriedly. “No one.”

I miss him more than I can stand.

* * *

“Why would you tell Shane?!” Brendon asks, voice raised either because he’s angry or because he has to compete with the noise that’s coming from the party taking place behind the doors of the studio lounge. The music is thumping through, a celebration with the band and the production team, Shane and four film crew guys asking everyone how they feel with cameras on their shoulders, cables zigzagging across the floor. Brendon is pale and upset and yelling at me. “He’s asking all kinds of questions now! About The Followers and if I noticed anything when I was a roadie for you guys, if I ever picked up any vibes, he even – He even asked if you’ve ever come onto me!”

“Well, what’d you say? Have I… ever come onto you?” I let my eyes slowly, slowly roam over his body.

“Of course I said no, lied through my teeth. What do you think?” he asks. He’s scared. He’s jumpy. I wonder if it went down like I pictured it, Shane bursting through the door with, ‘Ryan fucks men!’ And at that moment, Brendon sitting there on their couch, eyes wide as saucers, did he think, ‘Oh god. Ryan told Shane’? Maybe. Brendon seems thoroughly shaken, and maybe he really thought that I went to his better half and told Shane why exactly he and Brendon were distant this winter. “God, you shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know what - Fuck, why’d you do that?”

“Because of the tour. The documentary.” I lick my lips slightly. “The men I’ll be fucking.”

He lets out a deep, unnerved breath and crosses his arms, maybe a sign of annoyance. Who knows? I watch the muscles of his forearms, the way they’re pronounced through the skin. The t-shirt is grey. It’s new. He leans his back against the wall of the wide corridor, made with the transportation of instruments and other equipment in mind, and the sound of laughter echoes from the party. I look the opposite way, to the double doors that lead to the reception. I don’t want to be here.

“You’ve just made everything harder,” he sighs, and I want to ask him when exactly was it meant to be easy. “That was a stupid move.”

“Well, he can’t exactly unknow it now, can he? I did what I had to do.”

“For the documentary.”

“Exactly,” I lie.

He looks at me with what could be disappointment. I don’t want to stand here to be scrutinised by him, for him to come up with a million new reasons why I’m a failure. “You’ve made your point. Alright?” he asks quietly. Which point was that? “Not taking my calls, avoiding me... Your tour plans. I guess you’re over me then. What with all these other men you want to do instead.” His tone is challenging. I don’t take the bait. He swears under his breath, jaw line tense. “I’m sorry. Okay? When you – When you came to our apartment, that was a- a weird situation that neither one of us was prepared for. We didn’t handle it very well. It was stupid, and we should forget about it. Go back to the way it was.”

“The way it was?” I echo. But the way it was wasn’t working. Doesn’t he realise that?

“Yeah. Before Bismarck and all of that. Things were really good between us, remember?”

I do. They were amazing. We were amazing.

Shane thinks they’ve rekindled since. I don’t know if that’s the reason why Brendon and I seem to be miles apart from each other. Brendon hasn’t said a word of it to me, not even when I got back from Bismarck and we slipped back into our daydream: we’d eat ice cream in bed, enjoying post-coital chatting about music, calling room service for some vanilla to go with the chocolate, and I remember how he lay there, nothing but some sheets covering his crotch, laughing as I dived in for an ice cream kiss. Desperately wanting to pretend that nothing had changed. But it had. I could detect his guilt – it was penetrating our world, bursting our bubble. He pulled away from all the kisses too quickly.

He never said a word about him and Shane and still clearly doesn’t plan to.

“We just need to be more careful,” he says gently. “Shane’s paying attention now.”

“Go back to the way it was and be more careful,” I recap for him.

He wants to go back in time. Before I told him how I felt. Before I told him that I knew he didn’t want to acknowledge how I felt.

That’s two times he is choosing to ignore. Deny, deny, deny. Hell, we’ve done it before. I’ve done just that before, and Jac, god, Jac out of all people comes to my mind, sitting in a bar with me, suspicious eyes on me – ‘You’re not in love with him, are you?’ No. No, no, no. I was so good at it. I was so fucking good at it.

If I did it once, I can do it again.

“Are you coming to any of the Led Zep shows this week?” he asks, and yeah, I forgot about that, that he and his team are spending the next seven nights making sure that the dressing rooms of Madison Square Garden have enough beers and sandwiches. His grand finale. He’s giving up everything for the documentary project: quitting his club job to come on tour, having at least postponed the actual job offer made by the promotion company now that his internship is at an end. I don’t know if I should be surprised that they want to keep Brendon on. Who wouldn’t?

“At some point, yeah. See how Bonzo’s doing,” I say, shrugging.

“Yeah? Because those things can easily drag on, and, well, it’s easy for me to disappear for a few hours before going home, so...” He trails off, inviting me back to our bed. I don’t know if I’m ready to join him there. When I say nothing, annoyance flickers on his face. “Come on. It’s stupid fighting about this.”

I push hair from my forehead, avoiding eye contact. “Is it?”

He doesn’t say anything, but his attempt at a warm smile disappears.

The door to the reception opens, and the receptionist girl whose name I have not bothered to learn seems relieved at the sight of us. “Mr. Ross,” she says. “I tried calling the lounge, but I don’t think they can hear the phone in there. I’ve got Miss Colleen on the line for you.”

I instantly feel more alert. “Connect it to the control room,” I request, and she nods, hurrying to do just that. Brendon’s lips have pursed, but he says nothing. I don’t want to finish having this conversation. “You should join the party before Shane notices our absence with his newly acquired skills of observation and deduction.” The sarcasm is as heavy as a fully iron heart. “I gotta take this call.”

His eyes flicker to the door of the control room just down the hallway. “Apparently you guys are breaking up.”

“Who the hell told you that?” I ask, and he shrugs nonchalantly. Doesn’t matter to him. Clearly. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” I say and head to the studio door, maybe walking out on him with a bit of a rebellious flair. He doesn’t stick around, and he doesn’t tell me to stop as his steps go the other way, towards the lounge.

The noise of the party disappears behind the walls and doors of the studio, and I flick the light on in the control room. A lone microphone stands on the other side of the glass, the darkness swallowing up all the other equipment in the live room. I sit on Bob’s chair by the mixing table and lift the receiver of the phone that has a light flashing red. “Keltie, hey.”

“Hey.” Her tone is official, lacking its usual warmth and friendliness. I feel relieved and sad and lonely and happy all at once. She’s done a number on me. “You didn’t answer at home, so I decided to try the studio.”

“Yeah, we’re all here celebrating. The album’s done.”

“It is? Wow.”

“Yeah, we’ve named it Wolf’s Teeth. I’ve named it, that is.”

“Sounds violent.”

“It is.”

“Well, congratulations.”

I hear female voices at the other end and figure that she’s calling from the dance studio. That’s where I’ve been calling, mostly, bombarding the secretary Penny with messages for Keltie. She hasn’t made herself known in over a week, despite my best efforts.

“You know I’ve been trying to call you.”

“I know.”

Oh. Well. I guess she’s not returning my calls because that’s what I did to her. Payback. Smart. Or just cruel punishment.

“So how’ve you been?” I ask, absently pushing buttons on the mixing board.

“Not good, Ryan.” She sighs, sounding pained, and I echo it with every fibre of my being. I’m not doing so well either. No, I’m not doing well at all. “Maybe we should get together and talk.”

“Okay. Sure.” That sounds good. I’ll give her my sad puppy eyes, and she’ll crumble, and then at least one thing in my life will be the way it should be. And now that the album is done, I’ll spend more time with her, I swear that I will. I’ll take her to those movies she wants to see, accompany her to those Broadway shows we’ve never gone to, I’ll be there more, because she’s been away for a week and it’s forced me spend too much time by myself. I’m not very good company. “Did you get the flowers?”

“Yes, I got the flowers. Thank you.”

“Sunflowers. Your favourite.”

There’s a long pause on the line where I wonder if she’s still there. When she speaks again, the calm tone from before is gone. “They’re not my favourite.”

“Oh, come on. They are. Remember when we went to that Italian place in San Diego? Every table had a sunflower, but you wanted them all, so I made our waitress steal the other table’s flowers. You were wearing that hat of yours that matched.” The memory is a pleasant one, making me smile. We have plenty of good memories, Keltie and I.

“Ryan, I’ve never been to San Diego!” she exclaims angrily, but she has, I know she has, we were there, it – Oh. Oh _shit_. “Oh god, you’re confusing me with Jac, aren’t you?”

“No!”

“A hat with a sunflower?”

“Keltie, baby –”

She hangs up on me. I take the receiver from my ear and stare at it in horror, and instantly a wave of rage washes over me. “Fuck!” I swear and throw the receiver against the studio glass, but it just makes a loud thud and drops onto the buttons. A ‘toot, toot’ echoes from it until it’s all I hear. Jac has blonde hair, Keltie has blonde hair, I’ve been to restaurants with both, it was a damn easy mistake to make. Fuck. Fuck! I try, I really fucking try, but what do I get for my efforts? Nothing. Nothing but shit thrown at me. “Motherfucking piece of shit,” I swear, and maybe those gossiping friends of hers are right. Maybe I am the worst boyfriend of the goddamn decade.

I put the receiver down, pick it up again and call the dance studio, the number memorised by now.

No one picks up.

* * *

I was planning to go before I even knew that Brendon’s promotion company was involved in the string of seven sold out shows at Madison Square Garden. I felt obliged, really, having hung out in the same circles as Bonzo in London back in 1975. I didn’t expect Brendon to have anything to do with this tour: his promotion company handles unknown cases at small venues. Well, Led Zeppelin is big enough for smaller companies to have been hired as extra help.

The backstage area is massive, the band is on stage, and the likelihood of seeing Brendon anywhere is limited. Good. Because I think he was right, ironically enough: space. I need that right now. I need it because he is confusing the hell out of me, and I can’t be around him when I feel like this. He wants to make up. No, he wants to forget and pretend, and I am expected to do the same.

Right now, I might be better off without him fucking up my mind.

Gabe is hyped, telling me to introduce him to the band. I only know Bonzo, once met Robert, once shook hands with Jimmy, and have never even talked to John Paul. I’ve prepared myself for a night of heavy drinking because that’s what Bonzo likes to do, and I appreciate him for it.

“Vicky says we’ll play here,” Gabe yells in between songs, and I watch from the sidelines into the arena. This place was Pete’s dream: twenty thousand people. This is what he wanted for The Followers. We would have gotten here. We would have.

The crowd is larger than any Followers crowd ever was. I remember shaking and trembling and falling apart at the sight of crowds half the size. I see the mass of people, fading into black, and even if the lights were on, the people at the very back would be even less than tiny specks of colour. I don’t feel put off by them. I don’t feel like I need to prove anything anymore. I’m not saying that fans screaming my name no longer affects me, it still does, but I’m no longer terrified of them figuring me out. They try, they really do, but so far only one person ever has, and so the ratio tends to be on my side.

Gabe cheers enthusiastically when Robert screams into the microphone, shirt open, jeans low on his waist, crazy curls past his shoulders. He ends up on the stage floor, still screaming the same note, and I smell the sweat from the side of the stage. Followers memories come rushing back to me, but they don’t haunt me, just provide a contrast with what I now want: as much intensity without the theatrics.

When the show is over, a whole crowd is waiting for the band beside the stage. Bonzo is quick to spot me, greeting me warmly, and Gabe puts on his charming grin and has Bonzo eating out of his hand within five minutes. “We’re getting drunk tonight, lads,” Bonzo informs us with a broad grin. “We’ll drink ‘til we die.”

“Sounds like a plan to me!” Gabe says, and as Bonzo disappears to get showered and changed, Gabe and I mingle in the dressing room, groupies finding us quickly. Their manager Grant comes over and instantly tells me that whoever is managing me is shit and that he can do better than that clueless man. When I inform him that my manager is, in fact, a woman, he’s appalled and launches into a speech of women’s role as baby machines and housewives, saying that the little girl playing manager is going to ruin my career and should stay in the kitchen baking waffles for me and then sucking my cock in the bedroom every night. Vicky would have punched Grant in fifty different ways by now.

“Ryan, at least let me take you out for lunch,” Grant beckons. “Champagne? Where is – God, can we get some champagne?” he calls out loudly, snapping his fingers. “Anyone?!”

It’s right then when I’ve lowered my guard that Brendon appears, a champagne bottle in hand, glasses in the other. “Of course, Grant. Here you go.”

“Cheers, Brendon! Can always count on you,” Grant says, offering me a glass. Brendon just smiles professionally. Led Zeppelin are here for a week, this is their third night, and Brendon seems to have made an impression with his dressing room organisational skills. He looks tired, though. Exhausted.

“Hey, Ryan. Gabe.” His eyes linger on me. I wish I hadn’t had anything to drink because my judgement isn’t very trustworthy when I’m sober, let alone with alcohol in my blood.

“Bren, how’s it going?” Gabe asks, already pleasantly drunk.

“You know each other? Blimey, New York’s small,” Grant laughs, now lifting his champagne glass and drinking it greedily. We just shrug instead of playing the game of who knows who how.

“What have you got planned for tonight?” he asks conversationally.

“Going out to get drunk, high and laid,” Gabe sums up ungracefully, but yeah, that seems to be on the agenda. I might be single for all I know. Keltie has not returned a single one of my further calls. She did pick up yesterday, accidentally, maybe thought it’d be her mother, and we only ended up fighting and screaming at each other over the phone, me because I’m angry and scared, her because she’s angry and hurt. I called her high maintenance and needy, I think, I don’t know, I was just telling her to stop being a bitch already, and I made her cry, too, her last words before hanging up being, ‘All I’ve ever tried to do was to be the kind of girlfriend you need’.

She was right. That’s why she’s always kept me in a loose grip. Not because she didn’t want to hold me tighter but because she knew that I didn’t want her to. She’s been waiting for me to say that now I want her to.

Brendon says, “You guys have fun, then. We’ll be finishing off here after you’ve headed out to clubs.” Someone calls his name, and he gives us an apologetic smile. He brushes against me as he goes, his hand briefly touching my stomach, and my insides do a somersault. I practically shiver, the feel of his touch washing from my toes to the crown of my head, and I take in a shuddery breath and focus on looking like nothing happened at all.

He could slip away tonight. He told me he could, and I knew that coming here, but I told myself that I wouldn’t see him. Pretending that I didn’t even hope to see him. And I’m not sure if his offer still stands because everything is so unfinished with us. But no. No, I’m not vanishing into the night with him tonight, not until we can agree on where we stand.

He will come around. He will see things my way. I just need to exhaust him, that’s all. I’ve done it before.

“Take my business card, at least,” Grant then says, and I accept it out of courtesy, slipping it into my jacket pocket. It won’t go in, at first, the way blocked, and I pull out a piece of paper as Grant and Gabe talk about New York clubs.

I unfold the torn off piece of paper, expecting to find my own messy handwriting and some half-finished lyric, but I’m not the scribe behind the note. I read the short text and then look up in surprise, trying to find Brendon somewhere in the dressing room, but he’s nowhere to be seen. His brush against me was even more intentional than I thought.

“Ryan, you coming?” Gabe asks, signalling that we are now moving along. I quickly fold the note and pocket it, nodding hurriedly. Yeah. Coming. Sure.

But I see the text when I close my eyes, simple, painful and all too alluring: _I’ll be waiting at Chelsea Hotel. I miss your skin._

I won’t go. No. I won’t.

* * *

The bigger picture of the lyrics finally comes into focus half past three in the morning. I knew that they all linked together somehow. I find a pen and a notepad, look at the notebook scribbles, and it flows out of me suddenly, unexpectedly, and if at any point I fumble, I only need to look over to the hotel bed where Brendon is asleep. Red sheets are in a ball at the bottom of the bed, and he’s got his back to me, half lying on his stomach. His skin looks golden in the glow coming from the lamp by my chair and from the light of the city coming in through the window. I can hear him breathing. Evenly. Softly. Like music.

His spine curves, his body narrowing down from his shoulders to his waist, then moving outwards at his hip, like a wave running along the side of his sinuous form. His ass is pale but still slightly pink, the impact of my body against his having left marks.

I shouldn’t have come here.

I sip on my Scotch, trying to get his taste out of my mouth. Not because it’s unpleasant but because it fills me with contentment and purpose and that one thing he doesn’t want to know. The one thing he doesn’t need me to feel.

He was waiting. Like he said he’d be. Shower fresh, smelling of his musky cologne, and I was his the second I stepped into the room. He said, “Let’s just forget about it,” somewhere between the kissing and the removal of clothes, but we didn’t rush it. We took it slow and hard. And I never replied, didn’t even try to because I felt so lost.

Left Bonzo and Gabe before I was even two drinks in. Made up some excuse. They didn’t really pay attention.

My eyes drop back onto the hotel notepad, the Chelsea Hotel logo in the top right corner, and I flip onto a new page, a new stanza spewing out of me, and the rhythm of it is in my head. I can hear the notes. It won’t go away. This song.

He was sinful to watch. Beneath me. Mouth open, the filthiest, most erotic moans escaping his swollen lips, all hot and masculine and “Ryan, god, Ryan,” and I was waiting for that accidental slip of another name that never came. His brows knitted together, blown pupils staring at me through half-lidded eyes, cheeks flushed, pleasure flashing on his face. His hand dropped down between us, his fingers touching the point of connection, where I pushed into him. His fingers splayed there, my cock between his middle and index finger, like he had to locate where all the pleasure was coming from.

He shifts in his sleep. He moves onto his back. I don’t know what he’s dreaming of, but his cock is half-hard, resting against his lower stomach. He reaches out to touch the other half of the bed. My half. Shane’s half. His hand goes over the sheets, but he finds nothing. I expect him to wake up. For the absence to set off an alarm through his subconscious.

It doesn’t happen.

Of course it doesn’t.

He slips back into deep sleep.

When I climaxed, it wasn’t the same. It didn’t feel like it meant as much as it did before, and I think I would have felt that way even without the condom. He had bought some. Clearly knew I would end up coming here. He just said that it makes cleaning up easier. Now that we need to be more careful. So I put it on. I was hard, on top of him, of course I put it on if it meant that I got to be inside him. But I didn’t get to mark him. Claim him. I felt like a fucking tourist.

The white come that had gathered at the tip of the condom was a foreign sight. With women, it’s different, the small emission of sperm is a congratulations for not accidentally coming in her, that you did a job well done. Not this time. Not with him. I want to come inside him, want to touch him there after I’m done, feel my fingers wet from lube and my seed, kiss him, think that that’s when he’s at his most beautiful. Because he is.

Pulling the condom off felt like an apology.

He fell asleep quickly. Said, “Don’t let me fall asleep,” snuggling to me, tired, worn out, mouth swollen and red, and I kept kissing him. Trying to find more meaning in it than he was willing to give.

I’ll let him sleep.

He’s at peace. He’s tired. He’s working himself to death.

I’ll let him sleep.

I flip onto a new page. Tension curls up in my stomach, tension and loss and longing. How can he be asleep in my bed, still making me feel like I haven’t seen him in years?

His chest rises and falls. I watch him, mesmerised. This might be the last time I ever see him like this. This might be the last time he and I ever come to this room.

The second the thought enters my mind, a paralysing fear erupts in me, and I finish my Scotch, fingers trembling. These days cannot last. I know it. I sense it. Like a dog knowing that it’s about to die, with that same conviction it suddenly occurs to me that these stolen nights will wither. Maybe it never could last. Not when he’s drawing boundaries to my dreams.

I start breathing faster. I look at the notes. The letters are blurred. I close my eyes, wipe my cheeks, and try to get the page into focus. But nothing will come of it, nothing will come of this.

I put the notepad on the side table and get up. I try to move quietly. I don’t want to wake him up. No one else in this world might let him sleep, but I will. I will always let him.

His jacket has been thrown onto the couch in the main room. I sit down slowly, doing everything like a second takes five, and I find his wallet in one of the pockets. Ten dollars cash. Drycleaners receipt. Bank card, ID, nothing of interest. I look into one of the small pockets, the calloused pads of my fingers feeling the rough corners of folded paper. I pull it out. Unfold the paper. A picture.

I rest my elbows against my knees, leaning forward, the picture in my hands. Shane. Nothing else. Not even a good picture of Shane, or Shane with something interesting in the background. Just Shane. Looking kind of stupid and out of focus. I flip it around. Brendon’s handwriting greets me again, and it looks like I’m not the only one writing confessions on whatever writable material I can find: ‘First day in our new home. Best day of my life – 17th of April 1975’.

The sounds of his breathing aren’t audible to the other room. I’ve done so many foolish things in my life, but this one beats all the rest of them. Been such an idiot. Been so fucking stupid.

I leave his wallet in his jacket pocket the way it was, like nothing has ever been touched. I find the rest of my clothes, dress silently, tie my shoe laces. He’s asleep in our bed, and I lean down to kiss him on the lips. He stirs slightly, warm air puffing against my dry lips, but I soothe him before he can wake up, brushing his soft hair. He falls back into sleep. Restful sleep. The world where everything is easy.

I would like to think that I walk out of the room gracefully, that I don’t stagger and I don’t fight for breath. I clutch onto the notepad, mind spinning, the entire world spinning, and I feel so gullible and so sick, and the elevator takes forever to get me to the ground floor. I wipe my cheeks with my sleeves.

Two blocks down, I spot a payphone. I find a few coins in my pockets. The hotel receptionist puts the call through after some desperate convincing. It rings and it rings and it rings, and finally Bob groggily answers, “Hello?”

“Bob. It’s Ryan.”

“Ryan…? It’s – It’s four in the morning, it’s –”

“I need you to come to the studio. Right now. I need you to – Bob, there’s this song, I need to record it, you need to come down. Bob, please. Please listen. I need you to help me out because I can’t get it out of my head, and these words are pouring out, and god, it’s so ugly, all of it, all the things I thought were beautiful, they’re so fucking ugly. I see it whenever I close my eyes. I’m so fucking lost, Bob. I’ve got this one more song. Just this one last song, and then I swear that I’m done. I swear. But if I don’t get it out, it’ll kill me. It’s killing me.”

“I’ll meet you outside in half an hour.”

“Thank you.”

The line goes dead.

* * *

When I find her, it’s morning. My throat feels sore from alcohol, cigarettes and singing, and my knuckles ache from the hard wood of her door, but I knock and I knock. I feel like my legs won’t carry me much further, like I’ve used every ounce of my energy to get me here.

She opens the door, fully dressed, shoes on, like she is on her way out. She sees me and freezes, her eyes widening. “Ryan. My god, are you –” And then she opens up her arms and pulls me in, and nothing makes sense, nothing, but I focus on her arms around me, her words, “Ryan, baby, it’s okay, whatever it is, it’s okay –”

I tremble against her, and she pulls me into her apartment, door closing, haven, sanctuary, healing. She shushes me, petting my hair softly, and I hide my face in the crook of her neck, the skin soon feeling wet the way my cheeks feel. “You love me,” I whisper, clutching onto her. “You love me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Ryan, of _course_ I do.”

I try to breathe, try not to think of the sunlight creeping across the hotel room, stirring him from his slumber. Panicking. Hurrying to Brooklyn to be with him.

I clutch onto the back of Keltie’s shirt, pressing her against me as hard as I can. “I’m so sorry. Just don’t leave me. Please, don’t ever leave me.”

And then my legs give in, and she can’t support my weight. We fall to our knees, but she keeps holding me.


	8. Perfection

Imperfection is the route to lasting longer.

It’s the flaws that attract our attention. Absolute perfection is boring: there’s nothing to examine, nothing to discover. This is true for perfect beauty or the perfect government or the perfect anything – we need the flaws. They make us stronger, keep us alive.

This, of course, is assuming that the imperfections aren’t grave enough to cause everything we’ve ever known to blow up in our hands.

Ripping the flesh. Melting the skin.

Look down and see the white bone shining through torn muscle.

Ask yourself: what have I done?

* * *

Keltie’s silhouette is visible through the shower curtain, her hands in her hair. The razor’s blade swipes across my cheek, my eyes focused on her rather than on the shaving. She starts humming, her hips swaying to whatever she’s singing, and I begin to smile. I flinch from a sudden sting. “Fuck,” I whisper, quickly checking the damage. My thumb is glistening red.

Keltie draws the curtain aside and steps out of the shower. “You okay?” she asks, wrapping a towel around herself.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s not bad.”

She walks over and takes a gentle hold of my chin, but it’s a minor cut that will stop bleeding shortly. I look at her soft features as her brows knit together with worry. “Your fault,” I say.

“How so?”

“Distracting me.” I give her a suggestive look as my eyes dip down on her towel-covered body, and she laughs, giving my shoulder a push. Her eyes sparkle, her joy contagious, and my stomach reels and my heart expands: she’s one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever had the undeserved pleasure of stealing away from the nice guys. “I like it when you’re happy.”

“I like being happy,” she shrugs easily. “I also like pancake breakfasts. In bed.” She eyefucks me with the perfect amount of playfulness and naughtiness, and my cock responds in my boxers, definitely intrigued by the proposition. And for the first time in months, I wish I didn’t need to walk out on her.

“I think it’ll be more along the lines of pancakes stuffed quickly into my mouth as I dress,” I tell her sadly. “But I’ll come back as soon as I can. And then we can do whatever we want. Whatever _you_ want.”

“I want a pony,” she says with a blank expression, but she bursts out laughing when I gently poke her in the ribs. She swats my hands away before I get the chance to tickle her, holding her falling towel pressed to her chest, and I get a nice glimpse of her pale ass when she walks out of the steamy bathroom.

“Nice view!” I call after her, and she flips me off as I laugh and turn back to the mirror to finish shaving.

I look at my reflection: the spot of blood on my chin, the circles under my eyes, the smile stretched on my lips. Every laugh covering up the crater inside me. Convincing enough?

I should be so lucky.

By the time I finish shaving, she’s got toast ready. It’s not pancakes but, well, she says I have no eggs, milk or flour, and I don’t even know why she expected me to have a fridge with actual food in it. It’s still nice, sitting in the kitchen with her, eating toast and drinking coffee, her in a pair of red panties and one of my undershirts, her shaved leg brushing against mine under the table, and she makes me laugh with all the stories about her fellow dancers that she didn’t get the chance to tell me when we were fighting.

“I’ll stock up your fridge,” she says, “and make pancakes tonight. We’ll have breakfast at midnight. We’ll be rebels, Ryan.” She sounds awed by the prospect and comically widens her eyes.

“We’ll break down society with our midnight breakfasts.”

“We will. We’ll become pancake pirates.”

“We will rule _the world_.”

She laughs, white teeth, perfect nails, brown eyes, smooth blonde hair, soft lips, and she makes it so easy, this life, and I feel like a damn champion whenever I manage to make her laugh, and I say, “Move in with me.”

She stops laughing. Her smile fades. “What?”

I put down the piece of toast, crumbles all over the round kitchen table, wiping my mouth and swallowing the last bit. “Well, I – I mean.” What do I mean? “You like my place. Don’t you? And it’s big enough, and I like having you here, it feels more like a home with you in it, and maybe – Maybe we could. I mean, if you don’t want to move in with a man you’re not married or engaged to, I get that, but come on, it’s _New York_ and it’s _1977_ , and no one’s that old fashioned around here, no one will frown upon it. I think we’re ready. Or I mean – I’m ready.” I know I’ve started babbling somewhere along the way, nervously because I _am_ nervous, because we’ve just managed to pull ourselves from the brink of a break up, because I almost messed this all up and lost her, and I’ve lost myself, and now these words are coming out.

“I don’t... I don’t know what to say,” she whispers.

“Say yes. I mean. Yes would be nice.”

Something flickers in my peripheral vision, but when I turn my eyes to the dining room doorway, there’s nothing there. More like a ghost or an echo: two bodies. A beer bottle placed on the counter, and his fast, uneven breathing and wide eyes, and ‘I’m not going to kiss you’, right there. A million years ago. A thousand stolen kisses later, here we are.

This is not about him. This is about me. About Keltie. About what we need as a couple, as a team – me and her against the world.

“I need to think about this,” she says but she’s slowly breaking into an astonished smile, and that’s all the answer I need. She needs time to think of an eloquent way to say ‘fuck yes’.

“Okay. Alright.” I finish the coffee quickly, seeing the clock on the wall – Vicky will be picking me up in the limo any minute now. “But just imagine this.” I get up and clear my throat dramatically. “Here.” I point at the window sill. “Here we’ll, uh, we’ll put some flowers. And over here we’ll... Fuck me, I don’t know, we’ll get a tiny statue or some shit, like of a ballerina, you’d like that, and you can redecorate if you want, I won’t mind.”

“Are you sure you want this?” she asks, staring at me intently. She’s smiling, radiating almost, and yes. It’s a good move.

“I want you here.”

I hold her gaze, seeing the unconditional love in her eyes, and long lost faith awakens inside me. Of something better. Of having that one person.

Before she gets the chance to reply, a sharp, determined knock echoes from the other side of the apartment. “That’ll be Vicky,” I groan like a kid. Don’t want to go. No, Mom, I don’t want to go. “Fuck,” I swear, realising I haven’t even gotten dressed yet.

Keltie seems to have realised the same, her eyes flashing over my form from the silver chain around my neck to the orange-green striped boxers I’m wearing, and the bruise on my chest was left by her, when she was starting to come, helpless, high-pitched moans and sharp nails and Ryan, oh Ryan, and just biting down somewhere.

Brendon does the same thing.

I feel nauseous.

“I’ll find you some clothes,” she says, kicking into motion while I hurry to greet Vicky, annoyed by her interruption when Keltie and I were in the middle of something important.

“My god,” my manager says when I open the door for her. “You have a press conference in half an hour!” She lets herself in, eyes flashing dangerously, but Keltie and I slept in, and then we made love, but I won’t tell Vicky any of that.

“Don’t panic,” I tell her as Keltie appears from my bedroom, a pile of clothes in her arms. Vicky stops in her tracks, her eyes following Keltie heading to the living room and dropping the clothes on the couch. She digs in, throwing dirty socks on the floor.

“It’s my fault Ryan’s running late,” Keltie says, pulling out a white undershirt and tossing it to me. I catch it easily and pull it on.

“So it seems.”

Vicky says nothing else. She probably thought Keltie and I were done for, just like everyone else thought. Knowing Vicky, she was trying to contain her joy that now she could mother me without Keltie’s interference. But they all underestimate us – even I did. There’s something genuine here. Love. There’s love here.

Keltie looks over dress shirts, letting out displeased sounds when she finds a stain, making a face when the shirt clearly stinks of cigarettes, but she finds a clean shirt, a jacket and pants to match. She’s got an eye for these things, like Jac did – but I’m not telling her that. No. No more accidental Jac comparisons. She’s a million times more significant than Jac ever was.

I get dressed as my girls watch the ensemble getting put together, and Vicky goes through the pile to find a tie to match the blue corduroy suit. Vicky snakes the tie around my neck, fixes the collar and knots the tie, and Keltie – still in nothing but panties and a shirt of mine – watches, but that familiar flicker of jealousy isn’t there. I see it written all over Vicky’s face as she tugs my tie – _mine_ – but Keltie smiles at me lovingly, and I find myself smiling back. This time, we’ll be perfect.

“You could come,” I tell her.

“Nah, that’s alright. I’ll clean up in here,” she says, motioning at the mess and my clothes. “Right now, it looks like a bachelor lives here.”

“Ryan, we’re running late,” Vicky says, heading out of the living room already.

“What will it look like when I come back?”

Keltie shrugs nonchalantly. “Maybe like we both live here.”

I break into a smile, and the crater decreases in size. It’s still the size of Texas, aching and throbbing and making it unbearable to breathe, but now it feels easier to handle. Easier to ignore.

It’s only when we’re in the back of the limo that Vicky asks, “Is she _moving in_ with you?”

“Yeah.” Yeah, she is.

Vicky huffs, crosses one leg over the other. “I thought you were fucking Brendon.”

* * *

We get to the hotel in time, and The Whiskeys enjoy the complimentary snacks in the side room as we hear the members of the press taking seats in the conference room behind the wall. Vicky’s snapping at Gabe for no reason, telling him what to say and what not to say to the blood hungry journalists, and I feel calm, I feel at peace.

Jon says, “This album will be the best music you’ve ever released. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time about it.”

I drink the bland coffee from the white, boring mug and smirk. “You telling me that I’m an egocentric asshole is your definition of a hard time?”

“Hey, I hadn’t heard the song yet,” he says in his defence, but I get it. I went behind his back, changed the tracklist, added a concluding number to the album that he had never even heard of. Jon’s second in command. It’s his album, too. I get it. And it’s not that I wanted the song on the album, it was Bob’s doing – that night, when we met up at the studio to do one last song, Bob said that only over his dead body would he let that song end up as a B-side somewhere. A nine-minute catharsis, a mix of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano and vocals. “It’s the best song you’ve ever written, man. I’m glad it’s on the album, even though you didn’t consult me on it. But it’s the apogee. It makes it all work, ties it all together.” He smiles to himself slightly. “I doubted you for a second somewhere there. Really didn’t have to.”

“I don’t know if – if I want to sing it live.”

I sound like a stupid little schoolboy when I utter the words quietly. Ashamed of my own heartbreak.

Jon doesn’t say anything for a minute or two, long enough for me to think that he’s forgotten the subject. Then he says, “Well, okay. If you think it’s too personal.”

“It’s not based on anything,” I say feebly. Jon knows. Probably. Bob asked me what the song was called: 708, I said, my mind flying back to the hotel. Just 708. Could be anything. Random numbers.

“Time to shine!” Vicky then informs us, and I become aware of the excited buzz that’s echoing from the Roosevelt Room, the journalists clearly waiting. One of the security men leads us out, the band first, then Vicky, and I linger around for two beats like she told me to, and only then do I follow them out into the conference room. Someone whistles, the hubbub quiets down, and I self-consciously tug my left sleeve as I head to the middle of the long table, the guys already seated. Microphones stand in a row, and a glass of water has been placed in front of me. Off to the side, Shane’s crew is filming. I know Shane is somewhere there, and I know that Brendon is somewhere there, too. I was escorted straight to the back room, and I haven’t seen either of them. Now I focus my eyes on the room of journalists instead of my lover or his boyfriend.

Or my former lover, really. Probably. I haven’t had the strength to get that confirmed yet.

“Hey,” I say into the microphone, and some of the tension seems to break. Two dozen hands lift right up towards heaven.

The Followers press conferences were easier because Joe wanted to answer every question and Spencer would often step in for me too. Now it’s different: Ryan Ross & The Whiskeys. The album is coming out on the 31st of May, 1977. Six weeks to go and counting. It’s not a band with supposed democracy. No, it’s about me this time, and nine out of ten questions are for me. Patrick gets asked if it’s true he worked in a book shop before getting discovered by me, Jon gets asked about how he and I came together, and Gabe gets asked how his name is spelled and if he actually has American citizenship. Vicky steps in when we get asked about tour plans, announcing that we will hit the major cities of North America in June, and in July we’ll be off to Europe.

Most of the questions are about The Followers. Where have I been? (“Right here, man.”) What happened? Comments on the bus crash? How has the music changed? Where have I been? What about the crash? How does my fame affect The Whiskeys? What kind of pressure do I feel? What life advice do I have? (“Don’t let some musician who doesn’t know the first thing about your life tell you how you should live it.”) Where have I been?

I answer sparingly, refusing to reply to a handful of them. That sickening burn from The Followers days, however, is gone. These situations used to be a lot more daunting. They felt like charades, people dressed up as clowns prancing around bellowing the most ludicrous lies about the world and the meaning of life and music. This time I actually believe in the music and the people who’ve made it.

“How would you all describe the album?” someone asks, notepad and pen ready. I look out into the room as the guys take turns – “A lazy autumn breeze washing over a deserted beach,” Gabe says – and involuntarily I look towards the camera and one of Shane’s puppets behind it. Shane is standing by the wall, leaning against it, but he’s not following the overly long press conference. He’s talking to Brendon. My stomach drops. “A hurricane,” Patrick says. I left Brendon deep asleep in our room five nights ago. We were fighting and then we fucked again, but nothing got resolved, and we’re not fixed, him and I. I think it’s over. Probably. I think so. But the thought alone is too much to bear, and I can’t breathe and I can’t see, so I don’t think about it.

He called the other day, though. Keltie picked up. I wasn’t home. Keltie said that Brendon had only been asking after a camera of Shane’s, and I never called him back. Brendon seemed surprised to have Keltie pick up, she said, but not in a suspicious way – she said it just to make a point of how many people had thought that our relationship was over. Guilt trip me a little.

Brendon thought it was over, just like the rest of them.

Now he knows better, and now he’s here. And he probably still wants to go back in time when nothing mattered except the thrill of forbidden touches, but I’ve told him that I want more. He knows that I want more.

Maybe it really was the last time I’ll ever be inside him.

“I’d describe the album as,” Jon says pensively, “a journey. But it’s got real warmth to it, a pulse.”

Brendon and Shane are talking, lost in the conversation, and I know the tilt of Brendon’s hips and the curve of his mouth and the way he laughs just _so_ , and Shane knows it too, staring at Brendon lovingly, and Shane reaches out to quickly and innocently brush a few hairs behind Brendon’s ear, fingers lingering on his neck. Brendon’s hand finds its way to Shane’s hip, caressing.

Right here. In public.

All eyes are on me, no one is looking their way, but they’re two fags in public, doing faggot-like things, and that’s stupid. That could get them killed if they did it in the wrong alleyway dark at night. The touches are the kind you do accidentally, if – if you’re so in love, so lost in the other person, that you just can’t help it.

“Ryan?” someone asks, their voice having an echo like they’re speaking to me from behind a thick, silky veil. “How would you describe it?”

I see myself standing up, going over to them, starting a fight then and there and possibly punching Shane, and then they’d all know, all of them – my band, Shane, these people with their cameras and words – and I’d wrap my arm around Brendon’s waist, keep him by my side, flip them off, steal a car even if I try not to drive if I can avoid it, but with Brendon on the passenger seat I’d stay on the road, I would easily stay on it, and then I’d just drive, the destination unknown and insignificant. To me. Would it be insignificant to him?

But I do none of it.

“I guess the album is...” I say, trying to find the words. The sound of my voice seems to cut through Brendon’s daytime fantasy of Shane because he starts and looks towards us, his hand dropping from Shane’s hip, but I make sure to focus on my microphone before he sees me looking.

When I close my eyes, I see the sunrise greeting us, shining through the dirty windshield of the car we should be in, and he changes radio stations, sleepy and happy and smiling, and I reach over to card my fingers through his hair, the other firmly on the steering wheel.

“I guess I’d describe the album as a collection of the things I’ve seen and done these past few years. The thoughts I’ve had, the stories I’ve heard.”

“So it’s autobiographical?” someone pipes out excitedly. “Your Followers lyrics are famously abstract observations on the human condition.”

I chuckle and lean closer to the microphone. “Don’t we all suffer from the human condition?”

They take it as a yes, and I swallow hard, the crater inside me expanding once again.

What are Brendon and I doing? What _are_ we doing?

“Thank you for the questions, but we’re out of time,” Vicky announces. “Wolf’s Teeth on tape and vinyl available nationwide on the 31st of May. Thank you!” She flashes a stunning smile at the journalists. She’s happy and proud.

The security men come over and hurry me out of the room when the vultures stand up and try to shout more questions after me. I’m escorted back to our waiting room, and the guys follow me, and Vicky starts organising a structured evacuation of the band plus me in order to avoid the fans and the press that will undoubtedly be swarming outside.

I sit on the couch and wait for her to give me orders. My muscles are tensed up, my fingers nervously tapping my knee as I gaze into space, seeing the two of them standing there, by themselves, looking so casual and intimate, and he and I could never have that because we hide in the shadows. That’s where we thrive. That’s where we belong.

“Ryan, your limo will be here in fifteen. Stuck in traffic,” Vicky tells me, sounding highly displeased. Voices echo outside the door, and I recognise Shane’s happy babbling, and then I pick out Brendon’s voice, and I don’t – I don’t think I can do this. Don’t think I have it in me.

“I’ll make my own way home.” She looks scandalised. “Vicky, I know how to dodge a few fans, take the staff entrance out. I’ll grab a cab in the next street corner.”

“A few fans? Hundreds have gathered out there by now, and don’t think they’re not keeping an eye on the back exits! The limo will be just a few more –”

The door opens, one of Shane’s crew guys comes in with a camera on his shoulder. I jump up, look around as if to gather my belongings only to recall that it’s all in my pockets. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you.”

The rest of my band looks confused by my sudden exit, but I hang my head and pass Shane in the open doorway. “Hey Ry –”

“Hi,” I say, cutting him off, and I don’t look at Brendon but still get a whiff of his aftershave as I pass him, and it’s enough to make my skin crawl. I head down the corridor, figuring that eventually there has to be a door leading out or a dead end or someplace where Brendon and Shane are not co-existing, but he follows me. I instinctively know it before I even hear the footsteps, and doesn’t he think that our lies are wearing thin? That it’s getting too obvious right now, our shared absences? What did he say? That he’s going out for a smoke when he can just as well smoke inside? That he forgot his wallet, his keys, his dignity?

“Ryan.”

I come to an unwilling stop, seeing a hotel cleaner entering a room four doors down, calling out, “Huskeepin!” in a broken accent.

When I turn to face him, Brendon’s got that soft smile on his lips, that one that he gives me as a hello, intimate and claiming like a lover’s touch. But our eyes meet, and he stops pretending. Stops trying to be sweet. His lips thin into a line, and worry – that ever persistent worry – is pushing through. “You alright?”

I laugh. “No. Not really.” Don’t know what else he expects me to say. Clearly, neither does he. He looks uncomfortable standing there, and he was right. Things were easier when I just fucked him on any available surface, no regrets, no second-guessing, no hesitance. “I asked Keltie to move in with me.” I can’t bring myself to look at him.

“…You’re marrying her?” His voice sounds oddly faint.

“No. God. Come on, it’s the twentieth century. I can live with her without marrying her.” I duck my head and worry on my bottom lip. This isn’t about him. Wasn’t about him. Wasn’t meant to be. “And I think I want to live with her,” I eventually conclude. She makes me want to be a better person. She gives me a focal point. She’s what I need.

“Well.” He clears his throat. One short cough. “What did she say?”

“She said yes.”

She did. She’s home – in our home – right now, cleaning up the mess that it is, transforming it into something new. And I won’t bring Brendon back there anymore, no, and as for Chelsea... Well, we still have our room. It’s still there. And he can lure me there anytime, he can get me to undress myself, he can get me inside of him, and he can get inside of me, and it’ll kill me every single time, but I’ll go, unless –

Unless.

I hold my breath and await his reply.

He scratches his cheek quickly, the initial incomprehension fading. I stare at him intently, trying to read something on his face, some grain of truth. “Okay,” he shrugs. Like it’s not a matter of any great importance.

“Okay? You’re fine with that?”

He smiles sardonically, but the irony is lost on me. “It’s not my business.”

“But it – it _is_ your business. _I_ want it to be your business.”

He says nothing. A stone fucking fortress that no one gets to enter, no one. Behind a door is another door, and I wonder how close to the core Shane is. How close any one of us fools has ever gotten. “I love Keltie but if you –” The words get stuck to my throat, and all the frustration that I’ve felt, that I poured into a stupid song and has since been building up again, is bubbling over. My pulse has picked up, and the sensible part of me is afraid of what the other half will say. “If you left Shane,” I say weakly, a desperate shot in the dark. “If you left him. And if you asked me to leave Keltie, if you said that you wanted for me and you to – Then I would. I would.”

“Ryan, now isn’t the time to –”

“Don’t change the topic, and don’t pretend I’m not saying what I am!” I snap angrily because he’s paled, he has that look of wanting to escape this situation but he doesn’t know how. He’ll say, ‘Ryan, let’s talk about this later’, and then we never will, or he’ll say, ‘Ryan, I just want it to be the way it was’, but it never will be. He’s looking up and down the hotel corridor worriedly, but it’s deserted, and where could we go? Him and I? Where can two fugitives go? “I can’t live this lie anymore, be stuck in this – this circle we’ve created. I want you. I want all of you: your kisses and your smiles and your fucked up thoughts and the messes you make and the lies you tell. I want that fucking look on your face right now, the one of you trying to look for a quick escape, that fucking look that I hate. I want it too. All of it.”

“All of it,” he repeats with an empty laugh. “Because you think you love me.”

I stare. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that – It means that you, and – and me, that – I mean that. Fuck. Fuck, I don’t know!” he snaps angrily, rubbing his face with one hand. He lets out a deep sigh, shoulders slumping. “I can’t give you all of me. That’s the _one_ thing I can’t give.”

“To me?” I ask, the wounds deepening each second. Why not me? Why? “Or to anyone?”

He looks like he himself doesn’t know the answer. “Look, if this is about Shane and me again, then I’m not going to apologise for it. I have _nothing_ to apologise for.”

“Don’t you?” I challenge him sharply, and he startles. But doesn’t he? Can he really stand there and take zero responsibility for the fire that he’s started inside me? I _think_ that I love him? I more than think that. It keeps me up at night, my love, ugly and angry and hungry and pining, it’s torturing me as we speak because he’s right here – right here. And he’s telling me that I can’t have him. And it hits me then – only then. It’s not worry on his face, concern for me or fear of getting discovered. No. Not at all. It’s guilt. That’s what it is. It’s not exactly new; I’ve felt guilty, too. I’ve felt guilty because Keltie loves me. He feels guilty because he... doesn’t. Because he –

“You know how it is, Ryan,” he says, tone full of apologies. “It’s a – It’s a complicated thing with us. And Shane and I...” he drifts off, like he’s struggling to explain it to me. He looks pained. “For a while we were drifting apart, but we’ve been... spending time together again. As a couple.”

“You mean you’ve been fucking,” I say, acid dripping down my throat.

“Amongst other things, yeah, but come on, you _can’t_ make that an issue. Think of what we’re doing here,” he hisses, motioning back and forth. I know they’re fucking, and it’s not just walking in on Brendon shortly after a round of sex or the condom he’s made me wear. It’s chemical. Something in the air. Something about the tension between the two of them that wasn’t there before, them having rediscovered each other’s flesh.

“What _are_ we doing?” I ask challengingly.

“Having an affair.” He says it promptly, like he’s rehearsed it in front of a mirror. Hi, I’m Brendon Urie, and I’m having an affair. He’s categorised it neatly, labelled it so that he doesn’t need to analyse it.

“At first, yeah. What have we _actually_ been doing this spring? Think about it. We fuck and we fight and we make up and we make out, and sometimes I feel like I can’t even breathe because I miss you too much, and you – _you_. You tell me that you miss me. You fuck me and tell me not to forget, but even then you don’t have the balls to specify what I shouldn’t forget: that we’re falling in love. That’s what. That we’re in love. And the second I say it, you run back to Shane and selective fucking memory kicks in, and suddenly he’s the love of your fucking life again, and –”

“I never meant things to go this far, I –”

“But they have!” I bark, cutting him off because our volumes have steadily gone up. A door behind me closes, and Brendon folds in on himself, looking panicked and scared. The cleaner knocks onto the next door down. This setting is absurd. Humiliating. Yelling in a hotel corridor and disturbing the staff. I try to regain some composure. “Things _have_ gone this far, and now I want all of you. Nothing less will do.”

“But this is all I can give,” he repeats through gritted teeth. He’s not sorry. No, he never seemed the type.

“But you don’t love him.”

“Of course I love him.”

“No! Not like – like _this_ , in this fucking all consuming –” I say, not even knowing how to describe it. “No. You _can’t_ love him like that.”

He looks like... like he pities me. Like he’s sorry.

“We’re in love,” I say, the statement lacking all the punch it should have. I swallow hard, feel myself trembling. “Aren’t we?”

He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything – not that he ever would.

“Fuck,” I swear quietly, not sure whether to laugh or cry, so I do neither.

“Maybe we should stop,” he whispers. Colour has drained off his face, and he looks morose, attending a funeral he started. I knew those words were coming. I knew that much, but they still make me lose my breath. No, god, no, no, _no_ – “I don’t think I can do this anymore, Ryan. It’s getting out of hand.”

From the options of screaming and shouting and breaking down and punching him, I choose recalling history. Sticking to the facts. I’ve lured him into my bed, made him my own, made a liar and a thief and an impostor out of him. Sometimes, I’m all he thinks about. Sometimes, when Shane fucks him, he thinks of me instead. Because he wouldn’t be this ashamed of me if he didn’t feel something. He wouldn’t feel guilty if I didn’t make him question the basic foundations that he’s built his life on.

He has to feel _something_ because no one is that strong, no one is that good of an actor – not even him.

“Maybe we really should stop,” I agree, as an ultimatum. Go on. Go through with it, then.

“It was fun while it lasted, right?” he asks, voice breaking. His eyes are wide and pleading.

“It was.”

“ _Ryan_.”

“What?!” I yell at him. “What more do you want?! You fucking confused little boy!”

“You’re leaving me no choice here!”

“Then say it!”

“It’s over! Fine! It’s fucking over between us! God, are you satisfied?!” he spits out, voice wavering, and there it is: heartache. A momentary lapse. We stare at each other unblinkingly. I close the distance in two strides. Our mouths crash together impetuously, and I pull on the short strands of hair at the back of his neck, and god, his scent, his skin, and I kiss him hard, saliva and tongue and dominance, and he kisses back, hands on the sides of my face, crushing and pulling.

“It’s over now,” I manage to say when we stop for air, before diving in deeper. His pained whine getting lost between our mouths. It’s over, it is, it really is –

He pulls back, tearing himself away. Our mouths let out a dirty, wet pop, and the ghost of his kiss lingers on my lips. He’s heaving, lower lip shiny. My skin feels electric when he looks at me, and the air is heavy around us, musky somehow. It’s over. I’m putting an end to this. I’ll go insane if I don’t.

“We’re done,” he says. “I swear to god.” He pulls me into a fade-out-and-roll-the-credits kiss that’s wet and slow and so full of desperate want that I melt into it, my hands gracelessly twisting in his hair.

“We’re done,” I agree against his soft lips and kiss him harder. His fingers dig into the small of my back and pull me closer.

But I’m still not the one who gets to take him home.

He’s kissing me, but he’s choosing Shane. He’s choosing Shane and whatever primitive form of love they have.

When I manage to realise that through the haze of want and longing and pathetic yearning, I let him go, the sudden release making him stumble backwards.

He looks at me, eyes wide.

It aches. It all aches. I quickly get out a cigarette and a lighter, trying to suck in smoke before it’s even properly lit. Hoping he can’t see my hands trembling. Do anything. Anything that detaches me from this. “So it’s over.”

“I know.” But he’s not moving.

We hold eye contact, and I won’t blink until he does. I won’t. This is a vicious cycle, of never being able to keep him in my bed for long enough. The days were always numbered. And so the past is gone now. The past is over.

I turn on my heel and head down the corridor, my eyes locating an emergency exit door. I push it open, needing to get out, far away, now, right away, this instant, and an alarm goes off and breaks the deafening silence, his silence, his never-ending, deafening silence, and as I head down the alleyway, smoking with shaking hands, trying to suck in uneven breaths, mind spinning, nauseating, something inside me screaming, the hotel staff begins to evacuate the building.

* * *

The way home is winding and narrow and full of detours to bars. It’s not my most graceful entrance, but Keltie will understand. She always does. And we’ll sit on the couch and she’ll hug me when I tell her that I just don’t know anymore, don’t know anything at all, and she’ll lean in close and whisper, “I wish there was something I could do to make you smile.”

Except this time I don’t know if there will be anything she could do. Anything anyone could do.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” I yell from the door first thing. “I got lost.” So fucking lost. I walk further into my apartment, but almost instantly trip on my feet, clumsily managing to balance myself. One of my jackets is lying in the middle of the floor. Next to it another. And another.

All the coats that were hanging in the coat stand when I left have been removed from the hooks and are now on the floor.

I slowly walk in further, confused but sobering up quickly, my eyes flying to the bedroom door – debris there too, sheets torn off the bed, my clothes discarded in piles, drawers hanging open, their contents emptied on the floor – a robbery, I’ve been robbed, I’ve been – And Keltie, where’s –

“Keltie?!” I call out.

No marks of a forced entrance, my door hasn’t been kicked in, is there blood, what if there’s blood –

The living room comes into view at the end of the hallway, and amidst the wreckage, the seemingly total destruction of my place, is Keltie, sitting on the couch, resting her elbows against her knees. I stop at the sight of her. The world stops at the sight of her. She looks up at me with red, swollen eyes, mascara streaks, hair in disarray, like it’s been pulled on. No. No, I haven’t been robbed.

I know.

“What’s going on?” I ask feebly. I know, I know, oh god –

She wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands. Her breathing is ragged and irregular. “I only…” She stops, voice fading. She pulls herself together. Barely. “I only wanted to empty your pockets. Sort out some laundry.” Her voice is rough in a way I’ve never heard it. Screaming. Crying. How long was I away for? “And I found this note.” Her eyes drop onto the coffee table, the only place in the living room that isn’t a mess. The offending object, a piece of paper, lies on the table innocently. Next to it a familiar looking key. I stand still, paralysed, so engrossed by the wreck that I can’t look away. “Why would – Why would you have a note like this? Chelsea Hotel. Someone waiting for you there. Why would –” I know the second half of the note too well. ‘I miss your skin’. So eloquent with words for once. “It didn’t make sense to me. I thought that- that it didn’t make sense. Any goddamned _sense_ , so maybe it wasn’t addressed to you. You had it by accident. That’s what it is. Only an accident. But I had to be sure, I wanted to be sure so I...”

Demolished my place. Turned everything inside out. For more evidence. The pictures of Brendon cross my mind, but they’re not on the coffee table, so it’s safe to assume that the few Polaroids are still hidden behind a framed picture of Keltie and me. A desecration, I know.

“I found this key. It’s a hotel key.” She’s speaking like she’s having an out of body experience, stuck in a nightmare she can’t wake up from. This isn’t her life. This can’t be her life. But it is because I made it so. “So I took it. And I went to the Chelsea Hotel.”

The gravity of the situation doesn’t really hit home with me until then. She went there. She saw everything. _Everything._

“Keltie –”

“And your- your clothes! Your clothes are there! Your guitars! Like you live there, like you – Your cigarettes and your books, and toothbrushes and condoms, and –”

“Let me –”

“ _I don’t understand!_ ” she yells, crying, ugly and loud, killing whatever pathetic and shitty excuse I was about to offer her. “Oh god.” She takes in calming breaths, and it slowly dawns on me that she’s been doing this for hours, sitting right there, waiting, breaking down, picking herself up again. Trying to make it make sense. I don’t dare approach her. I don’t dare do anything. When she’s stopped shivering, she looks up at me murderously. “Who is she?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Who is she?!” she asks, but I make no reply. “Vicky? No? Then Greta. It’s Greta, isn’t it? Or is it someone I’ve never even met, some adoring fan?! Or maybe it’s a bunch of women! Maybe you’ve been doing it all along and I’ve been so _stupid_ , so –”

“It’s only been going on for the past few months. Keltie, it was nothing, it was a mistake, and it’s over now, and –”

“A few months?” she asks in disgust. Six months. Roughly. Give or take. I already cut it down to a manageable amount of time for her, but even my lie is enough to repulse her. She stands up, grabbing her jacket, struggling to get it on. She was supposed to move in with me. We were supposed to be amazing. She was supposed to _fix_ me.

“Let me ex –”

“ _Shut up!_ ” she shouts across the room with a force that’s exponential to the small-sized woman that she is. But she’s not weak. She’s never been weak. I know she’s about to break down completely – she clearly has a few times already – but she’s a ball of fury that I know I deserve. I know I’ve done wrong by her, but if she just let me make it up to her somehow, if she – “There is _nothing_ you could say that I’d want to hear! Nothing!”

“Okay. Alright,” I murmur, trying to appease her, get some damage control going. She zips up her jacket. I panic. “Don’t leave me.”

She looks up in disgust and surprise. “What?”

“I’ve been unfaithful, but this is a wake up call! I’ll change! I’ll be – be different, someone _better_. We can get through this!”

“I don’t _want_ to get through this! I want you out of my life, I want to –” Her eyes flash with anger and disgust, but most of all with indescribable hurt and pain that I don’t even know how to make up to her. “Do you know what it felt like?! Standing there, seeing this secret life you’ve been living with some other woman? And after all the lies and deceit and betrayal, all you’ve clearly done behind my back, _this_ is your wake up call?! This is where you decide you’ve gone too far?!”

“You know what I’m like! I don’t – I’m not good with people, I don’t really see the big picture! I do stupid shit without thinking! And I – I need you. You make me better.” My voice wavers, and I quickly wipe my cheeks. “You’re the only person left that loves me for me. You’re the... God, Keltie. You’re the only person who’s ever loved me for me.”

She looks indignant. “And what about her? Doesn’t she love you?”

I swallow hard. “…No. I don’t think so.” That’s why Brendon feels guilty and sorry. The realisation of it is still only beginning to dawn on me, being too painful for me to fully acknowledge, but that’s what it boils down to: Brendon doesn’t love me.

Keltie’s lips twist into a cruel smile that I’ve never seen before. It looks out of place and wrong. “Then you’re the fool. God, you’ve killed us for nothing. For _nothing_!” The burst of anger seems to drain her, and she lifts a hand to her forehead, shoulders shaking as sudden tears rattle her. “I hope you never forgive yourself for this, that you never –”

“I made a mistake,” I persist feebly, again, and I will say it again and again and again and again, until she believes me. Because I don’t.

“Why did you do this? And with someone who doesn’t even love you! When I do! So _much_ that it hurts, that it –” She clutches her chest, sobbing suddenly.

“I know. Baby, I know, I just –” My mind is reeling, and I’ve spent so much time lying to her, too much time, and she deserves the truth. She will love me if I give her the truth. If she sees me being as open with her as she’s always been with me, and yes, god, that’ll make her stay. A sacrifice from me, the demolition of a wall. “I made the wrong call, but I finished it off.” Adrenalin makes me shiver, but I force myself to have the courage to say it. “I finished it off. With him.”

The truth. The ugly truth. The painful truth.

Oh, god.

The rules of physics disappear, the seconds dragging into sickeningly, sickeningly long hours in which Keltie’s eyes widen, and she looks at me like I’m a stranger, like she’s seeing some disgusting fucking thing – and I know she knows at least one gay male dancer so maybe she’ll- she’ll understand, but the little colour that her shouting has gathered on her cheeks fades away, and she looks so repulsed and appalled and shocked that I want to tell her that I can’t help it – I tried, I did try – that there’s just something wrong with me, and I don’t know what it is.

“Oh, don’t – God, don’t,” she manages to get out, lifting her hand to her mouth like she’s about to vomit if she doesn’t stop herself. “No, no, no, no –” She takes hurried steps, almost running towards the door, but I grab her arm. She turns around and slaps me without warning, her open palm hitting my cheek hard, stinging and burning. I let her go, mostly out of surprise. She looks deranged, eyes wild and furious. “Don’t you _ever_ touch me!” she screams, flat out _screams_.

The shame and guilt sting as much as my cheek does, and I don’t stop her – couldn’t stop her – when she walks out on me, on my mess, out of what could have been our home. I couldn’t stop her even as desperation fills me, even as I watch myself lose that one last person.

She walks out with a sense of finality, carrying her broken heart with a lot more grace than I do.

* * *

So what do you get in the end? What have you fought for?

The smoke clears and the sun also rises, but hindsight is a not a wonderful thing. It’s a useless thing.

I once told Jon that I can’t make everybody happy, and it’s true. That I chose myself. That I’ve kept choosing myself.

And a lot of good it’s done me.

Torn pictures and open books have been thrown all over the living room, lying on the floor like ripped apart bodies of young men after the Somme, and I, their commander, feel the weight of their deaths on my shoulders. All the little deaths of memories and dreams and her smiles and his kisses.

I made the wrong call somewhere along the way. In my quest for perfection, I took a wrong turn. And now she is gone because she couldn’t stay. And now he is gone because I couldn’t stay. But my heart, it beats, pushing his ghost into every cell of me, as consuming as it ever has been. And if I could, I’d tell Keltie that I get it now. What it’s like to be consumed by useless love.

I’m sorry, you know. I am so fucking sorry.

And the ground is battered, holed by bombs, shards of glass and bones under my feet, and the stench of it, _god_ , the stench of rotting death penetrates me, and it stretches beyond miles, death and loss fading into black.

Don’t go seeking perfection because it isn’t worth it in the end. Seek imperfection. And when you find it, let it stay that way. Don’t go changing it. Don’t go changing him.

And what makes me laugh like a maniac and gasp for breath as I lie down to forget on my sheetless bed is that the gems of perfection that I thought I momentarily held in my hands were the very flaws that ensured our destruction. That with every touch, he was stepping away from me.

And I laugh because that is the funniest, most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

 

 

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End of Vol.2 – II


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